A Series of Initiatives
In the past few weeks, the sixth-largest blockchain network with a market capitalization of $82 billion has undergone a series of initiatives aimed at expanding its business beyond crypto speculators and popular tokens.
In May, the Solana Foundation reached a tokenization agreement with global software group R3. R3 manages $10 billion in tokenized assets for traditional financial giants such as Euroclear, HSBC, and Bank of America.
In the past two months, three publicly traded companies have purchased millions of dollars worth of SOL and incorporated it into their balance sheets, reflecting Michael Saylor's BTC treasury strategy.
The development team behind Solana, Solana Labs, even opened a luxurious new headquarters called "Skyline" in downtown Manhattan. For an industry that prides itself on remote work and anonymity, establishing a physical base seems contrary to the spirit of DeFi, but for some developers, it represents a refreshing change.
"Having an office building is a great initiative because everyone is there," said Jean Herelle, founder of CrunchDAO. "If you spend a week in New York, you can go to that building and directly ask questions to Solana's technical team."
He added that members of the nonprofit organization managing the network, the Solana Foundation, would also work in the building. Additionally, this center sets the tone for future development by showcasing that Solana Labs is unashamed to borrow strategies from traditional enterprises.
Solana has been known for providing ultra-fast transaction services, with transaction costs being just a fraction of its competitor Ethereum.
According to Solscan data, Solana processed over 4,000 transactions per second in the past 24 hours, with an average cost of only 0.5 cents.
"Using this technology for Memecoins is too limited; the market needs to be much larger," Herelle said. "I call it institutional-grade scale. A black hole. Trillions of dollars."
Trading Strategy
Herelle transitioned from Ethereum to Solana in 2024, stating that speed was the key reason for CrunchDAO's shift.
CrunchDAO utilizes machine learning to extract trends from blockchain activity, which is crucial for financial institutions looking to build trading strategies or products for clients.
Thanks to the connections made by the Solana Labs team, he was able to meet with executives from Franklin Templeton and BlackRock at the Skyline office. However, whether Solana can successfully transform into the preferred blockchain for financial companies remains to be seen.
"I want to see if they can do it; it's like the speculative market trying to transform into a bank," said John Nahas, Chief Business Officer of competitor Layer1 Avalanche, in an interview with DL News in April.
Analysts at Standard Chartered stated in May that as the Memecoin speculation craze fades, Solana's price performance will continue to lag.
"We may have indeed passed the peak of Memecoins," Geoff Kendrick wrote, "therefore, we expect Solana to underperform Ethereum over the next two to three years before catching up."
Ethereum's Dominance
Meanwhile, the second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, still far outpaces Solana in almost all institutional metrics, including stablecoin issuance, tokenized funds, and DeFi activity.
According to DefiLlama data, Ethereum holds nearly two-thirds of the $247 billion DeFi space, while Solana accounts for only 9%.
However, the Solana Foundation has proven to be a flexible organization, able to seize trends more quickly than the more established Ethereum network.
In April of this year, Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital invested $50 million in a new staking SOL fund in Canada. Additionally, Apollo, which manages $785 billion in assets, launched a $1.5 billion diversified credit fund on the Solana network in May.
SOL Strategies is the largest corporate holder of SOL, with its stock trading at around 5 cents in 2024, now having skyrocketed by 3,900% and included in two Crypto asset ETFs under Invesco.
Washington Layout
"We've transitioned from the penny stock space to being allocated in some of the most powerful asset management ETFs, which have strict requirements for who can get a share," Leah Wald, CEO of SOL Strategies, told DL News.
Meanwhile, supporters are strengthening Solana's influence in Washington as Congress and the Trump administration work to establish a regulatory framework for the crypto asset industry.
In March of this year, prominent crypto asset lobbyists established the Solana Policy Institute, a lobbying group aimed at educating regulators about the role of decentralized networks like Solana.
"Their goal is to have legislators think of Solana immediately after mentioning BTC, viewing it as a distinct tier rather than lumping it in with many other tokens, including Ethereum," said John Darsie, a partner at SkyBridge Capital, to DL News.
Investors are optimistic about Solana's performance: over the past two years, SOL's price has surged over 640%, while Ethereum has only risen by 45%.
"First mover advantage comes before innovation, right?" said Michael Cahill, CEO of oracle developer Douro Labs, to DL News. "Innovators must disrupt at a faster pace, and I think Solana has been very successful."
The Backbone of DeFi
Despite experiencing a series of outages from 2020 to 2024, Solana has remained a key player in critical developments in the DeFi space.
Serum was one of the first decentralized exchanges launched on Solana in 2020, proving that on-chain exchanges could compete with centralized exchanges. However, after the collapse of the crypto asset exchange FTX, which held control over Serum's smart contracts, Serum ultimately shut down in 2022.
According to NFT analytics provider CryptoSlam, NFTs thrived on Solana in 2023, even briefly surpassing Ethereum in total sales.
After the launch of Pump.fun in 2024, the Solana network established itself as the preferred blockchain for Memecoins.
The project allows anyone to create a Memecoin with just a few clicks. Pump.fun also added a live streaming feature that creators can use to attract audiences across different social channels.
This feature was eventually removed after a user filmed a video of themselves attempting suicide. A follow-up investigation by DL News revealed that the suicide attempt was staged.
Nevertheless, the project quickly gained popularity and became one of the most successful mechanisms for attracting users to the Solana ecosystem.
According to data collected by Dune Analytics, Pump.fun has generated over 11 million different Memecoins since its inception, with total revenue exceeding $520 million and spawning over 18.8 million new Solana addresses.
Multiple Advantages
Due to these developments, Solana supporters have begun to turn to large banks and fund management companies.
On an afternoon in April, executives from VanEck, Fidelity, and Apollo walked into Solana's Skyline office on East Houston Street in New York.
Kyle Gannon, marketing manager at QuickNode, told DL News that this event, sponsored by QuickNode, aimed to introduce financial institutions to the various advantages of Solana.
"This is a massive push," he said. "Understanding the technology and economic landscape is crucial, especially when you work at these large institutions."
Tokenized Credit
Some audience members had a deeper understanding of the relevant content than others.
Christine Moy, head of digital assets at Apollo, explained the company's crypto asset strategy to a focused audience. She elaborated on how its tokenized credit fund further plays a role in the DeFi space, how crypto asset companies collaborate with Apollo, and the associated risk issues.
"Let's be honest," Moy said, "if what we build together ultimately collapses, that doesn't help the ecosystem at all." She also reminded the audience that Apollo would not give up easily.
Accompanied by Nick Ducoff, head of institutional business at the Solana Foundation, Moy stated that she would go all out. "Nothing can stop us right now," she said. "If you're ready, I'm ready to go big. The door is wide open."
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