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- The falling Solana price seeks support at the long-coming support of $117.
- Solana validator count has fallen to 795, marking a 68% drop from the March 2023 peak of ~2,560 nodes.
- The average directional index at 33% hints that the sellers have sufficient room to drive extended correction.
Solana Validator Count Hits Multi-Year Low as Network Centralization Increases
The Solana validator network has experienced a rapid decline, with active nodes declining to 795 as of the end of January 2026. It’s about a 68% drop, from the high in March 2023 of around 2,560 followed by Solana Compass and is widely reported in crypto analytics websites.
A new low since 2021, it has been accompanied by a three-five percent drop in the network’s Nakamoto Coefficient (the power of staking is now concentrated more deeply in less hands).
In some cases, it is interpreted as being due to active precoding by the Solana Foundation of pruning out non-performing or dormant nodes by actions taken in and around April 2025 (although independent operators see increasing financial pressures as the driving force).
The cost of running a validator will be high in initial and continuing costs, such as locking at least 401 $SOL every year to cover voting fees (including hardware, server, bandwidth), which can add up to initial commitment costs of about 49000 $Latat current values.
Larger validators typically offer no commission services to attract a delegation of the largest yield. Small stock shares do not compensate for the basic overheads of operations, so small stand-alone operations cannot keep up with this without losses. But even a competition on fees is hard because of the benefits that the big operators enjoy, in terms of visibility, reputation and access to large delegators.
A weakness in the lack of support mechanisms for a is another strain. The scaled back of smaller validator foundation delegation has been raised, and stake pools — formerly one of the most important avenues of distributed stake — are adding more charges to participating nodes that drain potential revenue. After entering many pools, most minor operators are now operating at net loss and serious consideration of the exit is now an option.
Such judgments are not based on confidence loss in technology and performance of Solana, whose number of transactions per day is close to 100 million but on simple economical unrealism.
This has led to debate about the risks of focusing on stakeholders, as well as long-term network resilience opportunities that exist under that trend. The community is beginning to push structural changes, such as introducing stake caps per validator or cutting incentives above some threshold; with aggregation rules on entities under common control to avoid circumvention.
Solana Price to Enter Consolidation with this Imminent Breakout
V-top reversal Solana price is shown in the daily chart analysis of its solani price from $1481. , 7 to $117? 1, taking a 21% loss, losing 4 per cent to 4,. The trading volume associated with this price action has started to record higher spikes, indicating the growing confidence of sellers to drive a long decline trend.
The $SOL price seeks support at a new trendline of $116, which is in the long run right now. candle in today’s candle, a long-tail rejection candle that is evidenced by 8. The price could jump about 6% before it challenges the downsloping trendline, which has been intact since September 2025 with support.
Solana’s mid-term correction trend is based on this dynamic resistance, which means that traders are at the center of what could be an important time for price action. This increased recovery momentum could push $SOL to $147 if buyers turn this overhead resistance to potential support.
$SOL
/USDT -1d Chart
Contrast, if the Solana price goes down below $112? But the selling pressure will push down the challenge to a decline below $100, 32 support.
Thanks for reading Solana Sees Sharp Validator Exodus as Staking Power Concentrates
