This report covers Figment’s main Solana validator and its activity through October, November, and December of 2025. On Solana, Figment is one of the largest independent protocol staking providers. Unless otherwise stated, all of the data utilized in this report is powered by Figment’s Data team.
We differentiate between validator metrics within Figment’s operational control & expertise to influence performance, and “external factors” outside of our control to influence. Metrics fully within our control: Voting Effectiveness and Voting Latency. Metrics subject to external factors: Skip Rate, as a lagging, previous leader delays when our validator sees a previously confirmed block (leading to failed block production and higher skip rate). Skip rate is best used in comparison to other validator operators over the same time period. Comparing individual validators over a brief period does not provide an accurate representation due to selective data, transaction fee volatility, and stake weight.
Q4 Metrics
- ~68% of SOL is staked
- 6.1% share of staked SOL by Figment validators
- Figment’s validator average Staking Rewards Rate (SRR) throughout Q4 was 6.44%, over 31% higher than the network average SRR of 4.7%
- Skip Rate: 0.04%
- Skip rate is the percent of leader slots in which a validator fails to produce a block which is eventually confirmed by the network. (source, Solana)
- Voting Effectiveness: 99.8%
- The percentage of correct votes, modulated by its latencies. (*over the past 30 days – source, Rated)
- Voting Latency: 1.02
- How fast did our validator correctly vote on a Leader’s landed slot (≤ 2 slots is optimal)
- Distance (measured in slots) between when a slot is landed by a leader and when a non-leader votes on the slot
- With the passing of SIMD-0326 as of epoch 842, Timely Vote Credits will be deprecated. SIMD-0326 is not yet on the Feature Gate Tracker Schedule, and is not yet live. When live, all validators earn the same rewards as long as they vote, regardless of performance or timeliness.
Solana: Proven Scale in a Performance-Critical Network
Figment secures over 6% of total staked SOL across all of its Solana validators and is the largest independent validator operator.
“Increase Bandwidth, Reduce Latency” and “Road to Decentralized NASDAQ” are Solana’s explicit end-state goals. Solana’s architecture heavily emphasizes hardware and networking performance for validators. This places unique demands on validators, where performance, hardware reliability, networking throughput and operational discipline directly impact rewards. Uptime, consensus voting latency and responsive blockbuilding when assigned leader slots directly affect our delegator’s Staking Reward Rates. Figment’s ability to operate at this level of scale across diverse geographic regions reflects deep expertise in Solana’s validator economics, infrastructure requirements, networking and network behavior.
Figment consistently delivers:
- Consistent performance in a high-throughput environment shown by low skipped slots
- Strong operational processes across Product, Protocols and DevOps to manage performance-sensitive risk
- Infrastructure with periodic hardware upgrade, validator client upgrades after security/impact analysis and additional networking upgrades like DoubleZero. All designed to scale without compromising safety
- Continuous personnel investment and long-term commitment to Solana as a core network
Institutions delegating SOL seek safety and stability. Figment offers both for Solana, an ecosystem known for rapid iteration and high-performance requirements. Figment is the largest independent staking infrastructure provider, entrusted by Institutions to secure 20MM+ SOL. This significant share of total staked SOL, demonstrates leading stakeholders repeatedly entrust capital to our infrastructure, for performance, and safety.
For many Institutional SOL delegators, choosing Figment is the best weighted performance and risk management decision Figment is a validator institutions can rely on.
Security & Risk Management
As Solana continues to scale throughput and introduce new protocol-level changes, validator security and operational discipline are critical to sustaining reliable rewards and minimizing downside risk. Figment operates Solana infrastructure with a safety-first, institutionally aligned approach, designed to protect delegated capital while maintaining consistent network participation.
Non-Custodial, Safety-First Architecture
Figment operates a non-custodial validator model on Solana. We do not custody client assets, control withdrawal authority, or operate signing wallets on behalf of delegators. Stake authority remains with the delegator at all times, while Figment focuses exclusively on operating secure, high-performance validator infrastructure.
This model is reinforced by strict separation of duties across validator operations, access control, and governance workflows, reducing the risk of correlated operational failures.
Figment applies its “Safety Over Liveness” philosophy to Solana operations by prioritizing vote integrity, and long-term stake protection over marginal performance gains or aggressive configuration changes. Validator updates, client releases, and protocol upgrades are evaluated conservatively and rolled out only after thorough testing.
Defense-in-Depth Security Program
Figment’s Solana security posture is built on a layered, defense-in-depth framework that includes:
- Bare-metal and cloud-based redundancy to mitigate infrastructure concentration risk
- Hardened access controls and least-privilege operational policies
- Multi-party change management and approval processes
- Continuous monitoring of validator health, voting behavior, and performance metrics
- Proactive dependency review and upgrade testing
- SOC 2 Type II–certified controls, independently audited and continuously maintained
This approach is designed to reduce both technical and human risk while supporting sustained validator performance under varying network conditions.
Solana-Specific Operational Risk Management
Solana’s performance-oriented architecture introduces unique validator risks, including network latency (skipped slot production, vote reward penalties for late consensus voting), potential/ongoing DDoS attacks on leaders, sensitivity to hardware performance and network configuration. Figment actively manages these risks through:
- Conservative hardware provisioning and network configuration
- Ongoing hardware and validator client tuning to reduce skip rate and vote latency
- Validator client and software diversity where applicable
- Geographic and infrastructure provider distribution to minimize correlated downtime
These controls support consistent validator participation while minimizing the risk of penalties that impact Staking Reward Rates over time.
Solana Rewards
Our report spans Epochs 857-902 (October 1 – December 31). This provides a comprehensive view of Solana’s staking rewards performance during Q4.
As a snapshot of Solana’s staking rewards performance during Q4, our report focuses on two types of rewards for delegators: inflationary and Jito MEV rewards.
Figment’s validator average Staking Rewards Rate (SRR) throughout Q4 was 6.44%, over 31% higher than the network average SRR of 4.7%
Validator Distribution
Validator distribution is a foundational element of Figment’s infrastructure strategy and a key driver of resilience at scale. Figment’s validator fleet is intentionally distributed to minimize correlated risk across geography, infrastructure providers, and client software, ensuring that localized outages, provider-level failures, or client-specific issues do not materially impact delegated stake.
Today, Figment operates Solana validators across 6 countries, spanning 10+ data center locations, with support for multiple validator clients. This diversified operating model strengthens network decentralization while delivering the performance, reliability, and predictability required by institutional delegators.
MEV on Solana
The evolving landscape of Solana’s monetary policy directly impacts institutional staking strategies. Prioritizing MEV infrastructure and transparent client advocacy processes position us to navigate these changes while maximizing returns for our delegators.
Our early adoption of Jito MEV infrastructure delivered ~.2% of total staking rewards in Q4 2025, demonstrating the growing importance of MEV in Solana’s reward structure.
As a Jito-Solana client validator, Figment captures supplemental value for delegators, in addition to native protocol inflationary rewards. This boost in total rewards from MEV, helps Figment’s delegators achieve higher average SRRs and earn more Solana rewards than the network throughout Q4.
Solana’s disinflation rate is -15% annually, reducing inflation rewards per epoch till they reach a terminal inflation rate of 1.5%. As inflation rewards shrink, Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) becomes a significant component of validator rewards. In this evolving landscape, Figment is strategically positioned to capitalize on these changes.
This MEV advantage becomes increasingly critical as baseline inflation decreases. Under potential future inflation reductions via MESA or similar proposals, MEV could represent 20-25% of total validator rewards during high-activity periods, favoring operators with sophisticated MEV extraction capabilities.
Looking Forward: Continued Solana Developments
Solana is entering a new era of validator performance and client diversity with Firedancer, a next-generation validator client developed by Jump Crypto. Designed from the ground up in C to eliminate software inefficiencies and fully leverage hardware capabilities, Firedancer represents a major step forward for the Solana ecosystem. Early mainnet data already points to meaningful validator performance improvements, including fuller slots, lower latency, and higher total rewards per block.
Figment is among the first institutional staking providers to operate Firedancer on mainnet, combining Firedancer’s engineering breakthroughs with our SOC 2 Type II–certified, multi-region bare-metal infrastructure. This integration allows Figment to deliver the next generation of Solana staking performance, higher throughput, improved stability, and smarter reward capture through optimized MEV and transaction-fee scheduling.
By supporting Firedancer, Figment is advancing true client diversity on Solana, a critical safeguard against correlated risk and validator concentration. As Firedancer moves toward full voting functionality, it is expected to enhance both network resilience and delegator returns, aligning with Solana’s long-term scalability roadmap.
For delegators, this means greater reliability, higher performance, and stronger risk-adjusted rewards. Figment’s Firedancer-powered validators are already demonstrating how protocol innovation and institutional-grade infrastructure together can redefine staking outcomes.
Figment also runs Agave, the Anza Labs team Solana validator client, as a failover for all our Firedancer validators. If a software crash or bug is detected that impacts our Firedancer Solana validators, Figment uses automated alerts and a dedicated DevOps team to repond to the incident in a timely manner and automatically failover to Agave. Our goal: ensure our valued delegator’s staking rewards are impacted as little as possible.
If you are interested in switching over to our Firedancer Solana validator, reach out to our team or delegate here.
In H1 2026, Figment supports Pye.fi, a Solana “Programmable Stake Accounts” (PSAs) platform and marketplace. Pye’s ““upgraded native stake accounts” or “Pye Accounts” allows validators such as Figment to create PSAs with varying maturities and terms. Figment may offer more attractive inflation/MEV commission structures for Pye PSA users (lower commissions, i.e. greater staking rewards), and the ability to share Priority Fees with delegators for the first time before SIMD-123 is active. In exchange, delegators lock their SOL within the native stake account for the duration of the PSA (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc). At no time does the delegator’s SOL in a native stake account with a Figment validator leave the validator, nor do Figment or Pye have any ability to transfer any native stake account SOL before the PSA maturity date.
The Pye marketplace enables PSA users to use their pSOL and ySOL tokens within DeFi. Users of Pendle.fi may be familiar with the concept of Principal Tokens and Yield Tokens mechanism. Usage within DeFI includes: collateral for lending, looped leveraged lending, discounted SOL purchases (pSOL) with the full amount unlocked at Programmable Stake Accounts maturity, derivatives trading on Staking Reward Rate (SRR) changes or Rho and more.
Derivatives trading rarely focuses on Rho beyond very long-term options pricing, as the risk-free interest rate for traditional capital markets is well-telegraphed by Central banks and priced by options market makers. However, with Pye’s pSOL and ySOL, Solana derivative traders may position on the rise and fall of a validator’s SRRe. For example, if a trader believes the SRR will rise due to an increase in network activity or other factors, they may purchase ySOL, as the rise in SRR leads to a larger relative value in ySOL’s claim on staking rewards. Full Pye marketplace pSOL and ySOL mechanism.
Stake SOL with Figment
Figment provides the complete staking solution for over 1000+ institutional clients, including asset managers, exchanges, wallets, foundations, custodians, and large token holders, to earn rewards on their digital assets.
On Solana, Figment is one of the largest non-custodial staking providers of staked SOL. Institutional staking services from Figment include seamless point-and-click staking, portfolio reward tracking, API integrations, and audited infrastructure. This is just one part of Figment’s mission to support the adoption, growth, and long-term success of the digital asset ecosystem.
When it comes to Staking Solana, Figment offers:
- More Rewards: Figment supports JitoMEV relay.
- Click-to-Stake: Experience the best staking interface for SOL with access to the Figment app. View your staking positions in real-time as well as stake, unstake, and view rewards. Track your portfolio across multiple networks and download detailed reports.
- Optimized Rewards Reporting: Access detailed and comprehensive rewards statements in various formats.
Figment offers a seamless Solana staking experience. Individual users maintain control with true non-custodial staking while institutions benefit from Figment’s robust infrastructure that provides security and optimized rewards. Sign up now and start staking Solana.
