Solana

Solana is a layer-1 blockchain that processes transactions through a combination of proof of history, a timestamp method that orders transactions before they reach consensus, and proof of stake. Solana's own site describes the network as built for speed and low cost, with transaction fees that typically stay a fraction of a cent. The native token, SOL, pays for transactions and secures the network through staking: SOL holders delegate their tokens to a validator, and the validator's stake determines its weight in confirming blocks.

A traditional finance reader can treat Solana the way a payments team treats a settlement rail: it is infrastructure, not a product on its own. What runs on top of it, a tokenized fund, a stablecoin or a trading venue, is what a bank or an asset manager actually uses.

The Solana Foundation is registered in Zug, in the Swiss Crypto Valley.

BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, known as BUIDL, holds cash and short-term US Treasuries and issues its shares as a token, run together with the tokenization platform Securitize. Securitize expanded BUIDL to Solana in March 2025, after Ethereum, Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche and Optimism (CoinDesk, March 25, 2025). At the time BUIDL managed 1.7 billion dollars, and RWA.xyz tracked it as the largest tokenized US Treasury fund by market share; the fund keeps running on all of these chains at once, Solana included.

USDC, the dollar stablecoin from Circle, also runs natively on Solana and settles a large share of Solana's onchain trading and payment volume. A bank or a fund administrator evaluating Solana usually looks at USDC and BUIDL together: one token for cash-equivalent settlement, one for a regulated fund position, both native to the same chain.

A German bank or broker that holds SOL, USDC or a tokenized fund share like BUIDL for a customer needs a crypto custody license under the Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz, KWG), separate from any authorization the token itself needs under MiCA. Germany issues more MiCA licenses than any other EU country, and several licensed German banks already run crypto custody businesses under the same KWG framework a Solana-based holding would fall under.

Staking SOL to a validator counts as a crypto-asset service under MiCA when a firm offers it to customers, so a bank offering Solana staking needs the matching authorization from BaFin or another EU supervisor. A crypto exchange-traded product built on SOL, sold to investors as a security, sits under prospectus and MiFID II rules the same way a Solana ETF filing in the US sits under SEC rules. For a tokenized fund position such as BUIDL, the relevant German framework is the Electronic Securities Act (eWpG), covered on Finance Loop's tokenization in Germany page, which sets out crypto securities registers and the BaFin licenses that keep them.

A tokenized fund or a lending protocol on Solana still needs outside data, a price or a net asset value, written onto the chain the same way it does on any other blockchain; Finance Loop's page on oracle networks covers why. Chainlink runs its Data Feeds, CCIP and Proof of Reserve products on Solana alongside its work with Swift and DTCC on other chains. Pyth Network started natively on Solana and remains one of the most used oracles on the chain, aggregating prices from more than 90 exchanges, market makers and trading firms before publishing them onchain. A team building a Solana application typically compares Chainlink's institutional track record against Pyth's Solana-native low-latency feeds before choosing one, or uses both for different data.

Finance Loop covered the Web3 Builders Ideathon in Frankfurt in March 2025, hosted by Solana Superteam Germany together with the Blockchain Founders Group, where Solana developers pitched startup ideas and competed for a combined 1,000 USDC in prizes. A year later Finance Loop supported Supertour Germany: Frankfurt as a media partner, an evening organized by Superteam Germany that brought Solana founders, developers and marketers together for an ideathon and a look at the Solana Colosseum hackathon; the event took place at neosfer, the Commerzbank innovation unit in Frankfurt that has since closed. Superteam Germany itself describes its mission as growing the Solana ecosystem in Germany through developers, creatives and operators who help launch and scale technology ventures.

Solana was among the supporters of TechClub 25/3, the fintech and blockchain party Finance Loop held with TechQuartier. At Capital & Code in Frankfurt, the Solana Foundation sits on a panel about how funds are distributed and traded on institutional blockchain rails, and Allfunds and Solana host the Project Harmonia Frankfurt salon as a side event. In Munich, the TUM Blockchain Club names Solana among its industry partners.

Yes. BlackRock's BUIDL fund, run with Securitize, has been available on Solana since March 2025, alongside Ethereum, Avalanche, Aptos, Arbitrum and Optimism. USDC, Circle's dollar stablecoin, also runs natively on the chain and settles a large part of Solana's onchain activity. Among its crypto ETPs, Bitwise offers one on Solana with the ticker ESOL.

Both run smart contracts and both carry tokenized funds such as BUIDL and stablecoins such as USDC. Solana processes transactions through proof of history combined with proof of stake and charges fees that typically stay under a cent, where Ethereum settles through proof of stake alone at a higher typical cost per transaction. An institution's choice usually follows the chain its counterparties and tokenization platform already support.

Solana itself is a blockchain network, not a company offering a service, so it holds no MiCA license. A firm that offers Solana-based services to EU customers, such as custody, exchange or staking of SOL or a Solana-based token, needs its own MiCA authorization for that service, plus a KWG license in Germany if it holds the assets in custody.

An institution delegates SOL to a validator, which confirms blocks and earns rewards proportional to its total stake; the institution receives a share of those rewards minus the validator's fee. Offering that service to customers is a crypto-asset service under MiCA, so a bank or broker needs the matching license from its national supervisor before it can offer Solana staking to clients; running the same stake for its own book alone does not need one. In Frankfurt, Crypto Finance (Deutschland), a Deutsche Börse company, runs a staking service for Ethereum and Solana, built with Figment, for institutional clients whose assets it already holds.