October 2026 Update

📈 Market Update: Things are Looking Up

Disclaimer: Not financial advice.

September’s Monthly Closes:

BTC: 6.5%, ETH: 8.8%, SOL: 14.5%, SUI: 60.5%, MON: 14.6%

The market showed ongoing momentum in September, every day erasing more and more doubt whether this rally really marks the beginning of a new cycle. Not only the big names like BTC, but also DeFi tokens like ENA, and even memecoins are seeing action.

While the Robinhood chain hype as come and gone, volume on Solana is still slowly building…

While there doesn’t seem to be a new central narrative driving this cycle, sentiment has clearly shifted. Respect the pump. Don’t get burned.

🔵 Solana: Full Firedancer & Harmonic

We’re in the process of switching our H2O Nodes Solana validators over to the full Firedancer client, which is finally ready and being adopted by validators. We’ve also switched the RevTec validator over to the Agave-Harmonic client, which should help to increase block rewards and boost revSOL’s APY. Speaking of which:

🟣 revSOL APY is Taking Off

From fixing reward cranks to improving the app frontend, the polishing of RevTec continues. And, for the very first time, the APY of revSOL has passed the APY of issSOL! In reality, the “real-time” APY is higher than this trailing 30 day average makes it seem. (Probably closer to 15%!) Improving the way APY is calculated and displayed is another item on the to-do list….

Let’s see how much of an additional boost revSOL will get now that we’ve move the RevTec validator to the Harmonic client. I’m encouraged by the pickup in on-chain activity - it’s almost time to start pushing revSOL in the market!

🥷 New Projects, Coming Soon?

I can’t say much, but we’ve started some interesting conversations recently, which could see us working alongside both familiar and unfamiliar names in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more, as we seek to innovate and expand our impact in the staking space…

🇬🇧 Catch us at Breakpoint!

It’s only a matter of weeks until Solana Breakpoint in London! I’ll be speaking at the validator day (“Block Zero”) on November 15th, giving a bull and bear case for Real Economic Value (REV) on Solana, in light of the recent SIMD improvements to the chain. My talk last year was very well-received, and I look forward to what is starting to feel like that latest in a yearly tradition.

Keep your spirits up as we start to brave the darker (and colder) months. One more month before the clocks change and the evenings start to get dark really early…

Onward and upward,

-Max Sherwood, H2O Nodes co-founder