At the end of November 2025, Solstice Staking, in collaboration with the Liechtenstein Trust Integrity Network (LTIN), Swiss crypto financial giant Bitcoin Suisse, and the decentralized staking protocol Obol, launched an institutional-grade Ethereum Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) cluster. This seemingly technical cooperation hides a grander ambition.
On the same day, the DeFi platform Kamino from the Solana ecosystem announced the launch of the PT-USX token on the Solstice Market, offering a fixed return of 16.5%. At this time, Solstice's total value locked (TVL) had already surpassed $320 million, with over 26,000 holders and 131,000 monthly active users.
Even more remarkable is that this protocol has not experienced a monthly negative return since January 2023, achieving an annual yield of 21.5% for the entire year of 2024, with a rolling 12-month Sharpe ratio as high as 8.09.
Behind these numbers is a carefully crafted strategy by physicist and Wall Street veteran Ben Nadareski. He facilitated Goldman Sachs' first Bitcoin-settled derivatives trade at Galaxy Digital, but now he has chosen to build an "institutional-grade" DeFi protocol on Solana. From a simple yield protocol to acquiring Bridgetower Capital, which manages $1 billion in staked assets, and collaborating with traditional financial giants to launch the DVT cluster, Solstice is actively demonstrating what it means to "break the yield monopoly."
Is this yet another beautifully packaged DeFi narrative, or does it represent a dimensional strike by traditional financial power against the crypto world? With these questions in mind, we engaged in an in-depth conversation with Ben Nadareski.
From Physicist to Wall Street "Traitor," to Web3 "Ambitious"
Ben's career path is filled with seemingly unrelated leaps: from exploring the fabric of the universe in physics to the millisecond-driven world of financial trading, and then to the decentralized crypto world. However, he believes that all of this follows an internal logic. Viewing and transforming financial markets through the lens of physics has always been his underlying mindset.
It is this unique perspective that has allowed him to thrive on Wall Street and see the future of cryptocurrency earlier than others. He led some of the world's first crypto derivatives trades with major banks and personally facilitated the Bitcoin-settled options trade between Goldman Sachs and Galaxy Digital. However, this experience also made him acutely aware of the insurmountable chasm between the "old world" of traditional finance and the "new world" of crypto finance.
Thus, he chose to "betray" Wall Street and fully immerse himself in the wave of DeFi. Solstice is the culmination of all his life experiences.
BlockBeats: You have an academic background in physics, later entered the traditional financial derivatives trading field, and ultimately devoted yourself to Web3 in 2013. Can you share the mental journey behind these significant career transitions? What key moments or beliefs prompted you to step out of your comfort zone time and again and embrace new fields?
Ben: Academically, I fell in love with physics—it's hard not to be captivated by a discipline that explores the fabric of the universe and answers humanity's ultimate questions.
I have always viewed economics through the lens of physics: if physics simulates the universe, then economics simulates human behavior. In my eyes, the market is a physical system, and assets are "fields."
Just like the "wave-particle duality" in physics, asset prices can be seen as discrete data points or as waveforms flowing over time. There is a profound underlying connection between physics and markets.
When I officially entered the traditional finance industry, I had already been involved in cryptocurrency development in my spare time. I quickly realized that crypto and DeFi are advanced forms of the entire traditional financial market—they are faster, more democratic, and discard the predatory nature of traditional finance.
The emergence of DeFi allows anyone to participate in accelerating the optimization of the global financial market. It breaks the old binary opposition, enabling us to engage in a truly meaningful endeavor while enjoying high returns.
Every educational pursuit and career choice I made ultimately converged into today's Solstice, which is the inevitable result of all my life choices.
BlockBeats: From rigorous scientific research to the millisecond-driven trading floor, and then to the decentralized crypto world, how have these three distinctly different environments shaped your thinking framework? How do you apply the "first principles" of nuclear physics and "scientific rigor" to Solstice's product design and risk management?
Ben: There are countless principles I draw from physics, but the most profound influence is the need to consider both subjective and objective perspectives when facing any challenge.
In physics, unless you can verify a theorem through precise mathematical derivation, you don't truly understand it; however, if you don't understand the theorem's position in the macro system, those mathematical formulas lose their meaning.
This logic applies equally to the crypto space and financial markets: when constructing a new asset or tokenizing it, if it lacks a robust economic model for validation, it won't work; but at the same time, you must fully consider how that asset survives and operates within its target ecosystem.
Ultimately, understanding and developing "value" is at the core of any successful DeFi product or asset. If you ignore the economic validation of value creation or fail to see how the product fits into a broader ecosystem, you are destined to fall behind in the wave of innovation.
In addition to value creation, this multi-variable analysis also applies to risk management. Traditional risk control models have limited utility; in a rapidly changing market like DeFi, you must incorporate qualitative factors into your considerations.
How is market sentiment shifting? How is the political landscape in key regions tilting? How do retail markets adapt to these changes? And how do whales interact with or even manipulate market dynamics? Integrating these dimensions into the risk framework has become a prerequisite for any top DeFi protocol in today's market.
BlockBeats: You led some of the world's first crypto derivatives trades with major banks at Galaxy Digital. What profound insights did that experience give you regarding the integration (or conflict) between traditional finance and the crypto world? How did these insights influence your intention to establish Solstice?
Ben: One significant achievement during my time at Galaxy Digital was facilitating the first-ever derivatives trade settled in cryptocurrency by a major financial institution, specifically the non-deliverable options (NDO) settled in BTC between Goldman Sachs and Galaxy Digital.
In the context of that time, this trade was highly symbolic. Timing is often the most critical variable for new products in the market. Although the trade was groundbreaking, the market's liquidity, participant depth, and risk control frameworks for pricing such trades had not evolved to a level sufficient to support rapid, large-scale adoption.
However, this trade did pave the way for institutions, allowing them to see the foundation for adopting crypto assets on traditional finance (TradFi) trading desks and offering a glimpse into the future.
This is a classic case of the combination of traditional finance and cryptocurrency, but it falls on the CeFi (centralized finance) side of the spectrum, while I founded Solstice with a very clear purpose: to evolve to the other end of the spectrum, which is DeFi.
For the past decade, I have been dedicated to building CeFi infrastructure in the crypto space while also studying DeFi applications in my spare time. The birth of Solstice aims to create "institutional-grade" DeFi while never abandoning our core principles of democratized, permissionless, and transparent access to financial markets.
I spent years promoting the adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain in the world's largest institutions, and those lessons have been directly infused into Solstice, aiming to raise the standards of the entire DeFi industry.
BlockBeats: Reflecting on your journey from physicist to Web3 entrepreneur, if you could give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ben: Staying up late won't kill you. Don't sell your Bitcoin to buy that car. Your thoughts govern your reality.
The Grand Strategy of Solstice: How to Replicate Wall Street on the Chain
The core mission of Solstice is to "break the yield monopoly." This sounds quite revolutionary, but the path to achieving it is steeped in Wall Street flavor. They employ a strategy known as "Delta-Neutral," which has long been a staple for institutional traders in traditional financial markets.
In simple terms, the core of this strategy is hedging. By simultaneously taking opposite positions in the spot and futures markets, they hedge against the risk of asset price fluctuations, thereby profiting from the price difference between the two.
This strategy, which has been operational in the proprietary fund of its parent company Deus X Capital for four years, is now being made accessible to everyone through blockchain technology without barriers. Data shows that this strategy achieved a yield of 21.5% for the entire year of 2024, with a rolling 12-month Sharpe ratio as high as 8.09. More importantly, since January 2023, this strategy has never experienced a monthly negative return.
In this chapter, Ben details how Solstice captures yield through funding rate arbitrage and why this seemingly complex strategy is a robust choice in both bear and bull markets.
BlockBeats: Solstice's core mission is to "break the yield monopoly." Can you use a vivid metaphor to explain to an ordinary investor who knows nothing about DeFi what Solstice is doing? Why is "institutional-grade yield" important and worth looking forward to for them?
Ben: In short, Solstice makes accessing "institutional-grade yield" within reach.
Whether your principal is $50 or $50 million, through Solstice, you can enjoy equally competitive yields.
In contrast, index funds, traditional passive investment tools, and entry-level stock market investments typically only offer single-digit annual returns, with significant volatility, sometimes even resulting in annual losses, not to mention enduring high fees and layers of intermediaries.
With Solstice, you simply connect your wallet and can earn interest through stablecoins with just one click, locking your funds for only 7 days. Besides performance fees (i.e., Solstice only takes a small portion if you make money), there are no hidden charges.
For investors without a DeFi background, after understanding stablecoins and completing their deposits, the last psychological hurdle they usually face is "where does the yield come from?"
In simple terms, we deploy funds into a market-neutral strategy. Specifically, we execute trades to capture the price difference between spot prices and perpetual contract prices—this is referred to as "funding rate arbitrage" or "basis arbitrage," depending on the futures duration.
This is a market dynamic that naturally exists in any financial market. In traditional finance, due to the market's extreme maturity, this arbitrage space has been compressed to a very narrow range; however, in the crypto space, given that the market is not yet fully efficient (or is still relatively young), this arbitrage space remains at a high level.
The strategy does not hold any directional positions (meaning we neither bullish nor long any cryptocurrency or other assets). This allows investors to enter the crypto market with a neutral stance, earning attractive returns at the lowest risk level across the entire crypto space (for those in the know, Solstice's 12-month rolling Sharpe ratio is as high as 8.09).
What's even better? By leveraging this naturally existing arbitrage mechanism in the crypto market, combined with Solstice's trading strategy, we achieved a return of 16.2% over the past 12 months, and even reached 21.5% in 2024.
This strategy has been operational for four years at our parent company, Deus X Capital, through a proprietary fund. Now, we are making this strategy accessible to everyone without barriers through a transparent and secure on-chain framework.
BlockBeats: Solstice has chosen a Delta-Neutral strategy as its yield engine. Compared to other similar strategies, what is Solstice's core barrier? Is it the team's trading experience, unique algorithmic models, or the infrastructure advantages on Solana?
Ben: We never outsource our sources of yield, nor do we engage in low liquidity speculative opportunities. We have a strong team of trading, operations, and risk control experts who have managed hundreds of millions of dollars using this strategy for years.
Solstice's Delta-Neutral strategy has three core principles that make it stand out among similar products:
Born for billion-dollar scale: Our strategy and protocol architecture are designed to accommodate billions of dollars in capital, with strong scalability;
True Delta neutrality: We are a genuinely neutral strategy. The severe liquidations and volatility in the market on October 11 serve as the best test, proving that Solstice remains stable amidst noise and turmoil;
Not limited to mainstream assets: Through partnerships with Binance and Ceffu, we can execute funding/basis arbitrage not only on core crypto assets (such as BTC, SOL, ETH, etc.) but also cover long-tail assets. The key is that our execution standards for these long-tail assets are entirely consistent with those for mainstream assets, strictly adhering to institutional-grade principles.
In addition to these three pillars, Solstice has introduced two additional measures aimed at providing the community with more optimized and secure yields, especially during periods when the funding rate arbitrage space is compressed:
Hedged staking, which involves staking underlying spot assets (earning staking rewards) while executing funding rate arbitrage trades (to hedge price risk);
Tokenized government bond allocation.
These two additional measures allow Solstice to maximize yields while maintaining Delta neutrality, even during periods of low funding rates.
BlockBeats: According to your data, the strategy has achieved extremely low drawdowns and 100% monthly positive returns. Can you explain in detail how you achieve such extreme risk control? How would your strategy respond under extreme market conditions?
Ben: That's right. Verified by third-party audits, since January 2023, Solstice's strategy has never experienced a monthly negative return while managing hundreds of millions of dollars.
The reason behind this lies in the core of the Delta-Neutral strategy—namely, not taking on directional market risk.
We always maintain a market-neutral position and trade in the deepest global liquidity pools of crypto through centralized exchanges (CEX) like Binance.
Most importantly, we have a seasoned team of traders, operations, and risk control experts who monitor these positions 24/7. If any risk threshold is triggered, we immediately switch our funding rate arbitrage or hedged staking positions to safe assets (such as tokenized government bonds) until the rates rise to an attractive level.
Regarding asset security, all our assets are guaranteed by top-tier custodial service providers in the industry, including Copper and Ceffu.
October 11 was a perfect case for stress testing. On that day, the largest single-day liquidation event in industry history occurred, but Solstice's performance was: 0 redemptions, 0 losses in strategy (in fact, we still generated positive returns that day), and our stablecoin remained 0 de-pegged.
I always encourage potential investors to delve into such stress test events rather than just take my word for it—because data is always the most powerful proof.
From Yield Protocol to Institutional Infrastructure
Solstice has chosen Solana as its main battlefield. In Ben's view, it is the only Layer 1 blockchain that can provide the "combination punch" that institutions truly care about: deterministic execution, sub-second finality, and high throughput.
However, Solstice's ambitions go far beyond this. The quadrilateral collaboration on November 26, 2025, revealed Solstice's grander strategic layout. By launching an institutional-grade Ethereum DVT cluster in collaboration with the Liechtenstein Trust Integrity Network (LTIN), Bitcoin Suisse, and Obol, Solstice is transforming from a simple DeFi yield protocol to an institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure.
What is special about this DVT cluster? It allows multiple independent operators to collaboratively run Ethereum validators, eliminating the risk of single-operator failure and improving uptime and decentralization. More importantly, it operates on institutional-grade infrastructure in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, complying with EU and Swiss regulatory requirements.
This means Solstice is no longer satisfied with being a high-yield DeFi protocol on Solana; it aims to become a bridge connecting traditional financial institutions with the crypto world. From acquiring Bridgetower Capital, which manages $1 billion in ETH staking services in December 2024, to launching the DVT cluster with traditional financial giants in November 2025, Solstice is building a cross-chain, cross-ecosystem institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure network.
BlockBeats: Your stablecoin USX is designed as a "yield-bearing asset." What is the specific composition of its yield sources? Does holding USX mean completely entrusting funds to Solstice's strategy team?
Ben: Here, I need to correct a small misconception: Solstice's stablecoin USX does not inherently carry yield-bearing properties.
It maintains a 1:1 peg with the US dollar and is over-collateralized with USDC and USDT (collateralization rate >100%).
The original intention behind USX's design is to enable seamless and zero-fee transactions within the DeFi ecosystem, significantly enhancing capital velocity. It has now been integrated into a range of partner application ecosystems.
Additionally, we are implementing the Flares program. Users can earn points by using and holding USX, which will be redeemable for SLX—Solstice's native token—during the upcoming TGE.
In terms of market position, USX is currently the 5th largest stablecoin on the Solana chain and ranks among the top 25 stablecoins globally, supported by a market size of $320 million.
It is this transparency and resilience through turbulent markets that have established a solid foundation of trust for USX within the community. We are very excited to expand our business globally, allowing everyone to participate and share in the benefits brought by Solstice.
BlockBeats: Why choose Solana as the main battlefield? Although Solana performs excellently, it has also faced challenges with network instability in the past. What additional safeguards have you implemented to ensure stability when carrying institutional-level funds and high-frequency strategies?
Ben: We chose Solana because it is the only Layer 1 blockchain that can provide the "combination punch" that institutions truly care about: deterministic execution, sub-second finality, and throughput sufficient to support continuous liquidity and high-frequency strategies without sacrificing user experience.
Solana is not only fast in theory— in real markets, it settles millions of transactions per hour, generates a block every 400 milliseconds, and completes transaction confirmations in about two seconds, with costs only a few cents.
For Solstice, we are not interested in boasting about raw TPS (transactions per second) data; rather, we value the "economic throughput" and composability that come when block space is both cheap and abundant.
Currently, Solana settles about 30% of the global on-chain spot trading volume, processes hundreds of billions of nominal value in perpetual contracts weekly, and supports one of the largest native stablecoin bases in the crypto space. This density of liquidity and concentration of developers enable us to build real-time operational institutional-grade yield components—without batch processing, delay windows, or severe fluctuations in gas fees.
Regarding past instability issues, such concerns were reasonable two years ago, but the network architecture has undergone fundamental changes since then.
PoH (Proof of History) has given Solana a deterministic global clock, and Turbine has accelerated block propagation. Recently, the Firedancer validator client developed by Jump Crypto has brought exciting upgrades—it introduces a second completely independent implementation of the Solana runtime.
Firedancer has already achieved millions (seven-digit) TPS in testing, but the greater significance lies in resilience: two independent clients significantly reduce the risk of a single implementation and substantially enhance the network's vitality. This is how to build an L1 that is not only faster but also structurally more stable.
On our side, Solstice has added a set of additional safeguards to ensure that institutional-scale funds can perform predictably even during periods of volatility.
We are equipped with internal circuit breakers, oracle redundancy, isolated yield channels, and automatic risk throttling systems to prevent our strategies from relying on any single external factor—including the blockchain itself. We view Solana as a high-throughput settlement infrastructure, but when designing our own systems, we have pre-set stress scenarios, sudden traffic spikes, and tail risk events.
So the short answer is: Solana provides us with the speed, certainty, and cost advantages we need, and we layer institutional-grade stability on top of that. When these two layers combine, you get a yield and liquidity platform that can truly scale to billions in Total Value Locked (TVL) and millions of global users, without sacrificing security or settlement guarantees.
BlockBeats: You mentioned that many protocols appear decentralized on the surface but are actually centralized. What do you think is the root cause of this phenomenon? How will Solstice avoid this issue through technology and governance design?
Ben: In my view, you can categorize all crypto or blockchain projects into the following four types:
- Building a beautified backend system for traditional finance;
- Establishing process-centralized institutional businesses within the crypto space;
- Institutionalizing DeFi to make it more accessible to the global retail market;
- Exploring the limits of decentralized and permissionless markets.
While I have great respect for the fourth type of explorers, I believe that is where innovation happens, not where global adoption occurs.
Solstice belongs to the third type. On one hand, we adhere to the principles and practices of DeFi, while on the other hand, we build robust and secure infrastructure around access mechanisms. We focus on widespread applications rather than purely experimental innovations, aiming to blend the essence of both worlds.
Solstice firmly avoids two extremes: we will neither attempt to rebuild those old systems filled with high barriers, high costs, layers of intermediaries, and permissioned access; nor will we act recklessly in the DeFi space without proper risk control.
Instead, we focus on building a trust layer for DeFi through robust, permissionless infrastructure while developing a successful business model that allows both large institutions and retail investors to participate simultaneously.
In this vision, the best practices of blockchain will shine, while we also achieve the risk management and security that today's mainstream financial systems possess. This is Solstice's foothold in the industry.
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