Bitquery’s comparison holds the wallets, trades and valuation method constant. The change is whether recorded $USDC payments to FOMO are subtracted. The 32% figure refers to wallets that were ahead before those fees, not to 32% of everyone in the study.
The 15% and 10% shares are rounded, so the size of that pre-fee winning group cannot be reconstructed precisely from the chart. The 32% crossover is Bitquery’s separately reported result.
For each wallet, the study combined sale proceeds with the value of unsold coins on Oct. 7, then deducted acquisition spending and FOMO fees. It also included trades those same wallets made outside the app in the coins being followed. The result is broader than app-only sales and includes marked holdings that had not been sold.
The comparison measures a fee’s accounting impact. Trading behavior under a different price schedule remains untested: cheaper charges could accompany different choices of coins, timing or trading frequency, with different results.
A narrow positive result is especially exposed: the recorded app charges can exceed the entire gain. This explains how fees can change who crosses break-even while still accounting for a minority of the money lost.
What FOMO fees cost on a small trade
The historical charges cannot be carried forward as one universal price. Bitquery observed a most common fee of 95 cents through July and 10 cents from August in its wallet study. FOMO’s current fee schedule, checked Oct. 29, describes several Solana routes with different minimums.
On its lowest-fee route, the published charge is 0.1 $USDC below 5 $USDC, 2% from 5 to 47.5 $USDC, 0.95 $USDC from 47.50 to 190 $USDC, and 0.5% from 190 $USDC upward. Other routes charge 0.5% with a 0.95-$USDC minimum. FOMO says route availability changes between trades.
For a small order, the minimum can matter more than the headline percentage:
The examples illustrate the published standard schedule before discounts; actual charges depend on the route and token. The app also lists a 0.05% rate for selected major tokens with small-trade minimums, and advertises referral discounts. Those exceptions make the transaction’s own quote important.
The table shows one trade. FOMO charges on purchases and sales, so an entry charge alone does not capture the cost of opening and closing a position. The exit fee and the amount actually received on sale also affect whether a trader breaks even.
FOMO’s terms, updated Oct. 26, say spot charges depend on size, token and routing. They say the displayed transaction fee controls over general examples, but do not guarantee that the displayed fee will be the charge applied. The terms also distinguish FOMO’s fee from third-party costs that can change between quote and settlement.
Solana’s fee documentation specifies a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature plus an optional prioritization fee. That describes the network’s charging mechanism; it does not set the commercial price of using a trading app.
FOMO says it covers Solana gas, priority fees and token rent, so users do not pay those items separately under its published description. Adding them again to the quoted app fee would overstate that particular bill. Pool or token-contract charges and differences between expected and actual execution prices remain separate considerations.
A different Bitquery audit of app fees and tips illustrates why the categories need care. It recorded $422 million collected by 25 matched apps on 711 million fee-paying swaps from Oct. 30, 2025, to Aug. 30, 2026. Those are neither the dates nor the wallet population of the FOMO return study.
That audit reported a historical 1.85% median-day FOMO fee rate. The outcome study reported roughly 0.5% across traded dollars in its own window. Different weighting and periods mean the two figures answer different questions; neither is a blanket quote for a trade today.
The broader audit also separates app fees, Jito tips, landing-service tips and network charges, while excluding pool fees. Its totals cannot be assigned to the later FOMO wallet cohort to produce an all-in cost estimate.
Lower fees leave the token risk
Bitquery reported separate medians of $130 spent on coins, about $4 paid in FOMO fees and a $25 overall loss. These describe the distributions across wallets and cannot be subtracted into one representative trader’s result. Recorded app fees totaled about $40 million.
The estimated dollar loss was more sensitive to unsold holdings than the share of wallets ahead. Bitquery’s baseline loss of about $395 million became $204 million using uncapped last prices, or $490 million when unsold tokens were valued at zero. Each estimate uses a different mark for holdings still owned at the end of the study.
Whole-wallet profitability after fees stayed between 9% and 12% under alternative assumptions. The persistence of that result matters more to the fee question than the exact valuation of every remaining token: most wallets were behind even as the loss estimate changed.
Coverage is bounded by missing venues and data gaps, the omission of coins already held before Jan. 13, and $USDC-only fee totals. The results describe the recorded Solana cohort under those assumptions.
CryptoSlate’s recent coverage of whether leaderboard profits can be copied and early buying as Solana slots shortened examined different obstacles to trading returns. The FOMO comparison adds a measurable app-pricing effect to that discussion.
The break-even test is what remains after the app’s entry and exit charges. Cheaper access can preserve a narrow gain or reduce a loss.
