Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Solana’s tokenized real-world asset ecosystem has hit a new all-time high of $3.3 billion, cementing the network’s position as the third-largest blockchain for RWA value. That’s a nearly fourfold increase from roughly $873 million at the start of the year.

The milestone puts Solana behind only Ethereum at $15.9 billion and BNB Chain at $4.0 billion. With a 10.39% market share in the RWA space, Solana is no longer a rounding error in the tokenization conversation.

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A trajectory that keeps steepening Solana’s RWA value climbed 27.92% over the previous 30 days, with 692 distinct assets now living on-chain. The network reached roughly $873 million in RWA value back in January 2026. By the end of Q1, that figure had ballooned to somewhere between $1.66 billion and $2.01 billion. The previous all-time high of $2.8 billion was set in May 2026.

Institutional players are already here Citigroup ran a pilot program for tokenized Bill of Exchange settlements on Solana back in February 2026. The pilot highlighted Solana’s low transaction fees and rapid processing speed as core advantages for institutional users.

Ondo Finance, which specializes in tokenized stocks and treasuries, has emerged as one of the key contributors to Solana’s RWA ecosystem. Kamino, another notable player, focuses on RWA-oriented DeFi markets. Together with support from the Solana Foundation and data infrastructure from platforms like rwa.xyz, the ecosystem supports a range of tokenized assets spanning treasuries, equities, and various financial instruments.

What this means for investors Solana’s 27.92% monthly growth rate and its position as the third-largest RWA blockchain changes the competitive dynamics. Ethereum maintains nearly five times Solana’s total RWA value, providing deeper liquidity pools and more composability options. Solana’s network has also historically dealt with outage concerns, and any significant downtime during institutional settlement processes could damage the trust that has taken months to build.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Solana has received another major injection of stablecoin liquidity after Circle reportedly minted an additional $1 billion in USDC on the network around July 1. The move adds to a year that has already seen unusually large gross USDC issuance on Solana, a chain where stablecoins have become central to swaps, leverage, payments, and on-chain trading activity.

TL;DR Circle reportedly minted another $1 billion in USDC on Solana. The mint follows another $1 billion Solana USDC issuance in mid-June. Gross 2026 USDC issuance on Solana is now reported at $64.25 billion. That figure is gross issuance, not current circulating supply. The distinction between issuance and supply is important here. A large mint does not mean all of that USDC remains circulating on Solana forever. Tokens can be burned, redeemed, bridged, or otherwise moved as market demand changes. The $64.25 billion figure refers to cumulative gross issuance during 2026, not the live amount of USDC currently sitting on Solana.

Why Solana wants deep stablecoin liquidity Stablecoins are the base layer for a lot of crypto trading behaviour. On Solana, they are especially important because the network is built around fast, low-cost settlement. Traders use USDC as collateral, as a settlement asset, and as a quick way to move between volatile positions without leaving the chain.

When more USDC is minted onto Solana, it usually points to demand for on-chain dollar liquidity. That demand can come from market makers, DeFi protocols, retail traders, or institutions routing activity through Solana-based venues. It does not automatically mean prices will rise, but it does show that the network remains a live venue for capital movement.

Gross issuance is not the same as circulating supply This is the part worth spelling out because the headline number can be easy to misread. Gross issuance counts how much USDC has been minted onto Solana across a period. Circulating supply reflects what remains after redemptions, burns, and transfers are accounted for.

So the $64.25 billion figure should not be treated as a claim that Solana currently has that exact amount of USDC active on-chain. Instead, it is a signal of throughput. It shows how much dollar liquidity has been created through the network during the year, even if some of that liquidity later moved elsewhere or was redeemed.

A stronger foundation for Solana DeFi For Solana’s DeFi ecosystem, this matters because stablecoin depth affects trading quality. More available USDC can improve routing, reduce friction, support lending markets, and make it easier for larger participants to enter and exit positions. In a market where liquidity often moves quickly between chains, stablecoin depth is one of the clearer signs of where users are actually active.

The latest mint also arrives at a time when Solana remains closely tied to high-velocity trading, meme coin activity, and decentralized exchange volume. That can make liquidity demand volatile. But it also keeps Solana near the center of the market’s most active trading lanes. For now, the fresh USDC mint reinforces the view that Solana is still attracting serious on-chain dollar flow.

This report is based on information from Solscan.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

Record SOL Holdings After a Big Q3 Buy@FWDind shares jumped more than 17% on Wednesday after the Nasdaq-listed company disclosed it purchased over 500,000 $SOL during its fiscal third quarter, which ended June 30. Total holdings now stand at 7.55 million $SOL, worth roughly $576 million, acquired at an average price near $79 per token.

That haul puts $FWDI well ahead of its nearest rivals. Forward Industries holds the largest publicly listed Solana treasury, bigger than its next three competitors combined. The latest quarterly purchase only extended that gap.

Since launching its treasury strategy in September 2025, Forward has assembled what it describes as the largest Solana treasury in the world, staked the majority of its SOL to its own validator infrastructure, and launched fwdSOL as a liquid staking token. The company's stated long-term goal is to compound SOL per share materially faster than the SOL staking rate.

Russell Index Inclusion Opens a New Capital Channel Forward Industries joined the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 on June 29, 2026, and the company said index inclusion may improve liquidity and expand its shareholder base. Management is leaning on that new visibility to raise fresh capital and continue scaling its $SOL position.

Chief Investment Officer Ryan Navi said inclusion in both indexes marks an important milestone and reinforces growing institutional recognition of the company's strategy. He added that the listing is expected to expand Forward's shareholder base and improve trading liquidity.

$FWDI was trading near $4.93 at the time of the announcement. $SOL touched a one-month high above $77, recovering sharply from a June low near $60.

The company deploys its assets through a range of on-chain opportunities, including staking, lending, and participating in decentralized finance. Forward Industries maintains sufficient operating capital and carries no corporate debt.

Sources:
Forward Industries SEC Form 8-K Filing (FY2026)
GlobeNewswire: Forward Industries Set to Join the Russell 2000 and 3000 Indexes
Decrypt: Forward Industries Shares Spike as Leading Solana Treasury Adds $38 Million in SOL

Jul 1, 2026, 1:00 p.m.

2 min read

Summary

World is a new onchain prediction market on Solana that allows users to trade event contracts like crypto prices and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.The platform is now live within the Phantom wallet and at world.xyz, utilizing Chainlink as its primary oracle infrastructure for market data.World enables users to trade directly from their Solana wallets, with positions, settlement, and redemptions occurring fully onchain using CASH stablecoin.World, the mysterious Solana project that garnered millions of views on X with little more than a glowing globe, cryptic posts and the tagline “Trade Everything,” is now live as a fully onchain prediction market inside Phantom.

The platform is online at world.xyz and in the Phantom wallet on iOS, Android and desktop, with Chainlink serving as its primary oracle infrastructure for its data.

Users can trade event contracts tied to crypto prices and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with additional markets on sports, geopolitics, and macroeconomics planned for the near future, according to an announcement shared with CoinDesk.

World’s world_xyz account has built attention throughsocial media posts offering scant product details, fueling speculation that the project could be a meme coin, trading app or broader Solana infrastructure play. Copycat WORLD-themed tokens have appeared on token launchpads, though those tokens are not official World assets.

The platform's identity stayed hidden until late June, when a legal disclosure on Phantom's site surfaced on X.

World is instead a non-custodial prediction market, with users being able to trade directly from their Solana wallets and funds moving only when they enter a market. Positions, settlement and redemptions happen onchain.

World uses Phantom’s CASH stablecoin as its settlement asset, allowing winning positions to be redeemed automatically inside the wallet. Phantom gives World immediate distribution through one of Solana’s largest consumer apps and follows Phantom’s broader push into in-app markets, including Kalshi prediction markets and regulated derivatives.

“Prediction markets are one of the most powerful applications you can build on a high-performance blockchain,” Pedro Miranda, head of consumer at the Solana Foundation, in Wednesday's announcement. “World is designed to show what Solana makes possible: real-time markets, onchain settlement, and a user experience that meets people where they are.”

Chainlink will provide World with market data and resolution infrastructure through Chainlink Data Streams and the Chainlink Runtime Environment.

The setup is meant to reduce reliance on human-led resolution, a longstanding friction point in prediction markets. Other event-contract platforms have also moved toward oracle-based settlement, including Polymarket for some price-based markets.

World is not the only Solana-native prediction market. Jupiter unveiled its Forecast beta on June 29, offering 15-minute bitcoin price markets.

The Phantom debut is the first of several frontend distribution partnerships World plans to activate across traditional fintech and crypto platforms in July.

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Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Building the Zcash Machine: Tachyon and Quantum Readiness

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Jun 30, 2026

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

Why it matters:

Zcash’s Tachyon upgrade aims to scale shielded payments, improve quantum readiness, and test whether its funding, security, and governance can hold.

US-listed Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $4.5 billion in net outflows during June 2026. This was the worst monthly figure since the products launched in January 2024.

The redemptions coincided with a sharp price decline. Bitcoin fell 20.48% over the month, its steepest monthly drop since June 2022, when the asset shed 37.28% during that cycle’s collapse.

IBIT Leads the Institutional RetreatJune’s outflows broke the previous monthly record of $3.56 billion, set in February 2025 during an earlier stretch of market stress.

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Bitcoin ETF Monthly Flows. Source: SoSoValueBlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) accounted for the bulk of the outflows. The fund alone shed $3.55 billion, close to 79% of the category’s total redemptions.

That concentration is striking. IBIT’s single-fund outflow nearly matched the entire category’s prior monthly record on its own.

The price data reinforces the pressure. Bitcoin closed four of 2026’s first six months in negative territory, with June’s 20.48% decline the deepest of the year.

How Crypto ETFs Performed in June 2026The weakness extended beyond Bitcoin, though the scale varied across categories. Ethereum (ETH) ETFs posted $528.99 million in June outflows, SoSoValue data showed.

Solana (SOL) ETFs recorded net outflows of roughly $786,580. The figure is small, but it marks the first monthly outflow for Solana ETFs since their launch, ending a run of positive months.

Top Crypto ETFs Performance in June. Source: BeInCryptoNot every category turned negative. XRP (XRP) ETFs drew $59.46 million in net inflows during June, holding positive despite the broader downturn.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) ETFs led the group with $161.05 million in inflows, the strongest June showing across the products.

The split suggests capital rotated within crypto rather than exiting entirely. Newer altcoin products absorbed fresh money even as the two largest categories saw sustained redemptions.

Whether that rotation hardens will depend on how Bitcoin trades in July, since a price rebound could pull capital back toward the incumbents.

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Solana’s validator client is about to get a serious tune-up. Anza, the engineering firm behind the Agave validator software, published the release schedule for Agave v4.2 on June 30, with mainnet feature activations targeting August 17.

What’s actually changing The headline number is slot times. Agave v4.2 will cut them from 400ms to 200ms as part of SIMD-0525. In plain terms, the network’s basic unit of time, the window in which a block leader processes transactions, gets cut in half.

Transaction size limits are also going up. The current ceiling sits at 1,232 bytes, a constraint that has long frustrated developers building complex on-chain applications. The v4.2 upgrade pushes that limit higher, giving developers more room to pack instructions into a single transaction without splitting them across multiple calls.

Then there’s rent. Solana charges accounts a small fee for storing data on-chain, and the upgrade will begin an incremental reduction in those costs.

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Anza CEO Brennan Watt framed v4.2 as one of the most substantial overhauls of the client software, linking it to broader optimizations targeting sub-millisecond latencies. That ambition ties into Solana’s Alpenglow consensus upgrade, which aims to achieve 100-150ms transaction finality. The v4.2 release doesn’t deliver Alpenglow itself, but it lays critical groundwork.

XDP networking hits supermajority On the same day the v4.2 schedule dropped, Anza confirmed that eXpress Data Path networking achieved supermajority stake on Solana’s mainnet. XDP is a high-performance networking framework that processes packets at the kernel level before they hit the traditional networking stack.

Reaching supermajority, meaning validators representing more than two-thirds of staked SOL are running XDP, unlocks a key feature: 100 million compute unit blocks. Anza needed XDP adoption at supermajority levels before the v4.2 features could safely activate. With that threshold now crossed, the August 17 target date becomes realistic rather than aspirational.

Anza’s release cadence Anza ships major updates roughly every six weeks. Agave v4.1 landed around June 26, meaning v4.2 follows almost immediately in the release pipeline.

The firm was formed in early March 2024 after forking from Solana Labs’ validator software. Since then, it has operated as an independent entity focused exclusively on building and maintaining the Agave client.

What this means for investors The XDP supermajority achievement demonstrates that Solana’s validator set is actively coordinating around infrastructure improvements. The risk side of the ledger deserves attention too. Cutting slot times in half is technically demanding. If validators with weaker hardware or connectivity can’t keep up with 200ms slots, the network could see increased skip rates or centralization pressure as smaller operators drop out.

Rent reduction could have outsized effects on DeFi protocols that maintain large numbers of accounts. Lower rent costs reduce the overhead for liquidity pools, order books, and other state-heavy applications.

Investors should watch the August 17 activation closely. Anza’s track record of consistent six-week release cycles suggests the team can hit deadlines, but v4.2 is, by the CEO’s own admission, more ambitious than typical releases.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

July 2026 features one of the largest token unlock schedules the Solana ecosystem has seen this year, led by a major vesting event for memecoin launchpad pump.fun and several sizeable releases across leading DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer-facing protocols.

Here is a breakdown of the most notable Solana ecosystem token unlocks scheduled for July 2026:

$PUMP Pump.fun is scheduled to unlock 86.65 billion $PUMP tokens in July, valued at approximately $123.65 million. The release represents 21.35% of the token's circulating supply and 10.14% of the total supply, making it the largest unlock of the month.

The majority of this release is due to the expiration of the project's original 12-month vesting cliff. 23% of the total $PUMP supply was allocated to team members and existing investors under a vesting schedule consisting of a 12-month cliff followed by 36 months of linear vesting. With that initial cliff now complete, approximately 82.5 billion $PUMP tokens will unlock immediately, while the remainder of the allocation will continue to vest over the following 36 months.

The unlock follows a period of aggressive supply reduction. Yesterday, June 29, pump.fun surpassed $400 million in cumulative $PUMP buybacks and burns, with a total of 146 billion $PUMP permanently removed from circulation. Those burns have effectively offset approximately 41.1% of the token's circulating supply.

The project previously committed to continuing programmatic buybacks for another year in April, allocating 50% of protocol revenue toward repurchasing $PUMP. As a result, July's vesting event coincides with an active supply-reduction strategy that market participants will do well to monitor closely. This will also serve as the first real price test for $PUMP since its TGE and will reveal how effective the buybacks are at absorbing selling pressure from the unlocks.

$JTO Jito will unlock 18.59 million $JTO tokens during July through linear vesting. The release is valued at approximately $14.11 million, representing 3.80% of the circulating supply and 1.85% of the total supply.

Beyond the monthly vesting schedule, July also marks an important milestone for the protocol's broader ecosystem. Jito recently teased the launch of JTX, its new trading app, in July.

Jito already generates revenue from several sources. JTX will introduce an additional revenue stream, with 80% of platform revenue accruing to $JTO holders, while the remaining 20% will support continued platform growth.

$GRASS Grass is scheduled to unlock 21.73 million $GRASS tokens through linear vesting during July. The release carries an estimated value of $10.25 million, representing 3.56% of circulating supply and 2.17% of total supply.

The unlock coincides with several anticipated ecosystem developments. Grass has announced that it will launch an in-app non-custodial wallet in July.

The wallet launch also carries additional significance for token holders. During the project's first Token Holder and Network Participant Call in November 2025, the team stated that full details regarding the second $GRASS airdrop would become available once the wallet goes live.

The upcoming Token Holder and Network Participant Call scheduled for July 7 is expected to provide further updates.

$ARX Arcium will unlock 5.86 million $ARX tokens on July 22, valued at approximately $1.53 million. The release represents 2.81% of circulating supply and 0.58% of total supply.

The unlock follows the launch of $ARX on June 22. Under the project's tokenomics, 185.2 million $ARX, or 18.5% of the total supply, was allocated to the community. At launch, 54.7% of that allocation became immediately available. The July 22 release unlocks an additional 3.164% of the community allocation, equivalent to 5.86 million tokens.

The remaining community allocation remains subject to a 12-month cliff followed by 42 months of linear vesting.

What to Watch July's schedule is dominated by the expiration of pump.fun's early investor and team vesting cliff. The release of more than 86 billion $PUMP tokens represents the largest unlock of the month by a considerable margin. Beyond $PUMP, projects such as $TRUMP and $DBR will introduce sizeable increases in circulating supply.

As always, token unlocks do not guarantee price movement. However, they remain an important metric for evaluating changing supply dynamics, liquidity conditions, and potential shifts in short-term market behavior across the Solana ecosystem.

Disclaimer: Solanafloor is a subsidiary of Jito Network.

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Circle just pulled a quarter-billion dollars worth of USDC off Ethereum and stamped out $910 million in fresh tokens on Solana. Think of it as moving cash between registers at a store, except the registers are blockchains and the cash is the second-largest stablecoin in crypto.

The net effect: a $660 million liquidity swing toward Solana.

How the burn-and-mint machine works Circle manages USDC supply through what it calls the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP. The mechanics are straightforward: burn tokens on one chain, mint an equivalent amount on another. Every USDC in circulation is supposed to be backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents, so these operations don’t change the total supply. They just change where the tokens live.

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The $250 million Ethereum burn and $910 million Solana issuance fit a pattern that’s been accelerating throughout 2026. Earlier in June, Circle minted $1 billion USDC on Solana in a single day. Days before that, there was a $500 million Solana mint. The cumulative gross issuance on Solana has been approaching $57 billion for the year.

USDC’s total circulation sits at approximately $73.6 billion as of late June 2026. The stablecoin is now native on over 30 networks.

Why the migration matters The institutional angle has gotten more concrete this month. Circle expanded its partnership with BNY Mellon in June 2026, enabling direct mint and burn capabilities through the bank’s custody services. That means institutional clients can now create and destroy USDC without going through Circle’s standard pipeline.

What this means for investors For Solana, more USDC on the network means deeper liquidity pools, tighter spreads on decentralized exchanges, and more attractive conditions for both traders and protocol developers.

The BNY Mellon partnership adds another layer to consider. Institutional access to direct minting and burning means that large players can respond to market conditions faster than ever.

Tether’s USDT still dominates overall stablecoin market share, but USDC’s multi-chain expansion and emphasis on full reserve transparency have carved out a distinct institutional niche. The $73.6 billion in circulation represents significant ground gained.

The risk worth flagging: concentrated minting on any single chain creates dependency. If Solana experienced a significant outage or security event, having tens of billions of USDC sitting on the network would create redemption pressure that could test Circle’s operational capacity.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

TLDR:

Solana RWA distributed asset value climbed to $3.03B after posting a 13.2% increase over 30 days. Monthly RWA transfer volume surged 120.5% to $8.53B, marking the fastest-growing network metric. RWA holders reached 290,481 after growing 24.4% in one month, showing wider ecosystem participation. Solana stablecoin market cap rose to $15.77B, supporting liquidity across the expanding RWA market. Solana’s real-world asset market continues to expand as fresh on-chain data points to stronger activity across tokenized assets. 

The latest figures show higher asset values, growing participation, and a sharp rise in transfer volume. Stablecoins also remain a major source of liquidity across the network. The new metrics highlight steady growth across multiple parts of the Solana ecosystem.

Solana RWA Ecosystem Records Higher Asset Value and User Growth Data shared by Everstake shows the Solana RWA ecosystem reached $3.03 billion in distributed asset value. That marks a 13.2% increase over the past 30 days.

❗@solana's RWA ecosystem is reaching a whole new level.

Every month, the numbers get bigger.

And more importantly, they show that real-world assets are becoming an increasingly important part of the Solana ecosystem.

• $3.03B in distributed asset value, up 13.2% over the… pic.twitter.com/vpyj2eJowj

— Everstake (@everstake_pool) June 29, 2026

The same dataset shows the number of RWA holders climbed to 290,481. Monthly holder growth reached 24.4%, indicating broader participation in tokenized assets.

Transfer activity expanded even faster. Solana recorded $8.53 billion in 30-day RWA transfer volume, representing a 120.5% increase from the previous month.

Everstake highlighted transfer volume as the strongest metric during the latest reporting period. The figures suggest assets moved across the network at a much faster pace than before.

The platform also reported 2,115 tokenized real-world assets operating on Solana. Represented asset value stood at $125.86 million during the same period.

Stablecoins Continue Powering Solana RWA Market Activity Stablecoins remained the largest segment supporting the Solana RWA market. Network data placed the total stablecoin market capitalization at $15.77 billion, up 3.43% over 30 days.

Stablecoin transfer volume reached $487.08 billion during the month. Activity increased 3.59%, even as stablecoin holders declined 7.77% to 10.95 million.

The league table published alongside the data ranked Circle as the largest platform by asset value. Circle accounted for approximately $7.1 billion across three supported asset classes.

Tether Holdings followed with roughly $3.8 billion, while Paxos ranked third at $1.4 billion. BitGo, Securitize, Anchorage Digital Bank, Ethena, Ctrl Alt, Solstice, and Ondo completed the top ten.

Among individual assets, USDC remained the largest tokenized product on Solana with nearly $6.97 billion in distributed value. USDT followed at about $3.77 billion, while BitGo’s USD1 exceeded the $1 billion mark. 

Other leading products included Anchorage Digital Bank’s USDGO, Paxos-issued PYUSD, and Securitize’s BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. 

According to Everstake’s published figures and the accompanying Solana RWA dashboard, stablecoins continue to dominate network value while tokenized treasuries, private equity, and corporate credit products steadily expand their presence.

DeFi Development Corp. has officially ended its relationship with DeFi Development Corporation UK PLC, pulling the UK entity out of its Solana treasury accelerator program. The separation, effective June 29, 2026, means DFDV holds no equity stake, operational involvement, or financial exposure to its former British counterpart.

The move marks the conclusion of the first implementation of DFDV’s Treasury Accelerator, a program designed to spawn public treasury vehicles dedicated to accumulating Solana. Markets seemed to like the clarity: DFDV shares climbed roughly 4.16% on the announcement day, closing at $2.84.

What happened and why it matters DFDV UK originally launched on August 29, 2025, positioning itself as the first Solana-focused public treasury vehicle in the United Kingdom. The entity emerged from DFDV’s approximately 45% equity stake acquired during the purchase of Cykel AI. In plain English: DFDV bought into an AI company, rebranded the UK arm as a Solana treasury play, and now that experiment is over.

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The UK entity will rebrand back to Cykel AI PLC and pivot its focus toward artificial intelligence. A revolving credit facility that previously existed between the two companies has been terminated as part of the split.

DFDV’s Solana treasury strategy remains intact The parent company isn’t wavering from its own playbook. DFDV, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker DFDV, remains squarely focused on accumulating SOL through staking, validator management, and its broader treasury operations. The company formerly operated as Janover Inc. before adopting its Solana-centric strategy in April 2025.

As of January 2026, DFDV reported holding approximately 2.22 million SOL. The company tracks a proprietary metric called SOL Per Share, or SPS, which stood at about 0.0743 at that time. Think of SPS as the crypto treasury equivalent of book value per share. It tells investors how much Solana exposure each share of stock represents.

The key difference between a Bitcoin treasury approach and a Solana one is that staking revenue. Bitcoin treasuries are essentially buy-and-hold operations. Solana treasuries can grow their position organically through network participation. For DFDV, this means the SOL pile theoretically grows even without additional capital raises, though the company has used various financing mechanisms to accelerate accumulation.

What this means for investors The separation from DFDV UK can be read as a strategic housecleaning. By severing ties with an entity that’s pivoting away from Solana entirely, DFDV removes a potential source of confusion for investors trying to understand what the company actually does.

The 4.16% share price bump on the news suggests the market agrees with this interpretation.

Investors watching this space should track three things going forward: whether DFDV launches new Treasury Accelerator partnerships to replace the UK vehicle, how the SOL Per Share metric evolves in upcoming quarterly reports, and whether the company’s validator operations generate meaningful yield relative to the cost of capital used to acquire those SOL holdings in the first place.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

US spot Solana ($SOL) ETFs have delivered a remarkably consistent performance since hitting the market, recording positive net inflows every single month since launch. June 2026, however, looks set to test that record.

The products are currently sitting at negative $5.8 million in net flows for June, with only two trading days remaining in the month to reverse the deficit.

A strong start since October 2025 The first US spot Solana ETFs debuted in late October 2025, with Bitwise's Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) launching on the New York Stock Exchange on October 28. This was closely followed by the conversion of the Grayscale Solana Trust (GSOL) from a trust product into a Solana ETF.

Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, Solana ETFs launched with staking built in, offering investors on-chain yield alongside price exposure. Bitwise targets average staking rewards of over 7% for BSOL holders.

The spot Solana ETF products accumulated approximately $1.45 billion in total cumulative inflows since launch. Despite experiencing negative price action over several months, Solana ETFs maintained positive net inflows, a trend that ran counter to conventional expectations of risk-on and risk-off behavior in crypto markets.

June brings the first real test Spot Solana ETFs saw $3.94 million in net outflows on June 26 alone, indicating investor hesitation. That single-day figure has compounded into a monthly deficit that now stands at $5.8 million, leaving the products on track for their first negative month since inception.

Bitcoin ETFs are net-negative year-to-date, and Ethereum has bled harder, but XRP and Solana ETFs have marked the rotation story of 2026. That context makes a potential first negative month for $SOL ETFs more notable. Whether June closes in the red will come down to whether buyers return in force over the remaining sessions.

DL News: US Solana spot ETFs seen to hit $5bn in inflows
Bitwise: Bitwise Launches BSOL, First Spot Solana ETP in US
SpotedCrypto: Crypto ETF Flows June 2026

SOL has been holding steady in the $71 to $74 range in late June, a small but meaningful show of resilience for a token whose underlying network is flashing some concerning signals. The token’s stability isn’t coming from the usual suspects. Instead, it’s being buoyed by a sector that barely existed on Solana a year ago: tokenized stock trading.

Solana’s traditional DeFi metrics are in retreat. Its total value locked has slid to roughly $4.8 billion, a far cry from previous peaks above $12 billion. DEX volumes dropped approximately 31% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2026.

Tokenized stocks are doing the heavy lifting Solana has quietly become the dominant chain for tokenized equities, and “dominant” might be an understatement. On June 20, the network captured roughly 99% of all tokenized stock DEX trades. That’s not a typo.

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Daily trading volumes for tokenized stocks on Solana have topped $200 million. Weekly volumes recently crossed the $1 billion mark.

Backed Finance has been a key driver, issuing 61 tokenized equity assets on the Solana network. Ondo Global Markets has also entered the picture, bringing tokenized US stocks and ETFs to the chain.

The DeFi decline in context The TVL drop from above $12 billion to around $4.8 billion is hard to ignore. That’s a decline of more than 60% from peak levels. A 31% quarter-over-quarter decline in DEX volumes during Q1 2026 adds to the picture.

What makes the current situation unusual is the divergence. Normally, falling TVL and shrinking DEX volumes would translate directly into token price weakness. SOL’s ability to hold the $71 to $74 range despite these headwinds suggests that traders are pricing in the tokenized equities story as a legitimate growth vector.

What this means for investors Weekly tokenized stock volumes just hit $1 billion on Solana. Tokenized equities are still a fraction of overall onchain activity, but they’re growing while traditional DeFi contracts.

Backed Finance’s 61 issued assets and Ondo Global Markets’ expansion onto Solana suggest institutional-grade players are betting on this trend accelerating. They’re building infrastructure for bringing traditional financial assets onchain, and they’re choosing Solana as their home base.

Investors watching SOL should track two metrics above all else: the growth rate of tokenized equity volumes on Solana, and whether TVL stabilizes around the $4.8 billion mark or continues declining.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Institutional demand for cryptocurrency ETFs weakened sharply this week as investors pulled billions of dollars from products tied to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. The latest wave of redemptions coincided with Bitcoin falling below $60,000, marking one of the most challenging periods for crypto investment products since the launch of spot ETFs in the United States.

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest daily net outflow in June on Thursday, while Solana ETFs are headed toward their first monthly net outflows on record. Across the broader market, crypto ETFs have collectively lost approximately $5 billion over the past 30 days, highlighting a widespread shift in investor sentiment.

Bitcoin ETFs post June's biggest outflow According to SoSoValue data, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $696.29 million on Thursday, surpassing the previous monthly high of $519.2 million recorded on June 2. The latest withdrawals extended Bitcoin ETF outflows to 6 consecutive trading days.

June has now recorded total net Bitcoin ETF outflows of $3.61 billion, while year-to-date net outflows have reached $4.56 billion. Since the beginning of May, investors have withdrawn approximately $6.04 billion from spot Bitcoin ETFs.

The selling pressure also appeared concentrated among the industry's largest funds. Fidelity's FBTC recorded $274 million in net outflows on Thursday, while BlackRock's IBIT lost another $265 million. The previous trading session on June 24 had already seen another $469.08 million leave US spot Bitcoin ETFs. The outflows have significantly reduced the size of the US Bitcoin ETF market.

SoSoValue data shows that total net assets across US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs have fallen below $73 billion for the first time since late 2024. Combined assets now stand at approximately $72.57 billion. The decline represents a substantial drop from the sector's peak of $169.5 billion reached in October 2025, leaving total assets approximately 57% below their record highs.

More recently, total Bitcoin ETF assets have fallen from $104.29 billion on May 15 to $72.57 billion, extending a 7-week decline. Bitcoin ETF assets now represent 6.09% of Bitcoin's circulating market capitalization, down from more than 7% during the May peak.

Solana ETFs Record Their Worst-Performing Month Solana investment products also experienced notable weakness. June is on track to become the worst month on record for US spot Solana ETFs, with the category posting its first monthly net outflows. Net redemptions currently total $5.80 million for the month. On Thursday alone, Solana ETFs lost $3.94 million, with all of the outflows coming from Bitwise's $BSOL fund.

Ethereum products also joined the broader selling trend. Spot Ether ETFs recorded combined net outflows of $81.87 million, with BlackRock's $ETHA accounting for $62.99 million of the withdrawals. XRP ETFs remained flat during Thursday's session, recording neither net inflows nor net outflows.

While other Hyperliquid-related investment products experienced withdrawals, Grayscale's $HYPG fund stood out as the sole major crypto ETF to record net inflows, drawing in $112.73 million. This positive momentum was primarily the result of Hyper Holdings providing the fund with seed capital in the form of 2 million $HYPE tokens.

Bitcoin falls below $60,000 The ETF selling coincided with another sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices. Yesterday, Bitcoin briefly fell to $58,050, its lowest level since October 2024, before recovering to around $60,000. The recent market weakness has been linked to concerns surrounding Strategy and its $STRC preferred shares, which declined further to a new all-time low of $72 earlier today.

Solana also came under heavy pressure during the broader market sell-off, briefly dropping to $64 before leading the recovery among majors with an over 10 % rise in the last 24 hours.

Will The Sentiment Remained Subdued? Market observers continue to view ETF flows as an important measure of institutional demand. Citi has previously described Bitcoin ETF flows as one of the best indicators of investor adoption and expects sentiment to remain subdued while ETF flows stay negative.

In a recent report, CoinShares noted that Bitcoin's recovery from approximately $58,000 indicates continued buying interest during market declines, although resistance around $60,000 remains significant. The firm also observed that whale selling, which contributed heavily to the October market decline, has slowed considerably. However, the firm cautioned that whales historically do not return as consistent buyers until the next Bitcoin halving cycle, which is expected in 2028.

Looking ahead, CoinShares expects market conditions to remain challenging as inflation concerns, elevated oil prices, and a hawkish Federal Reserve continue to weigh on risk assets. The firm also believes delays in passing the CLARITY Act could extend uncertainty about the US regulatory environment, with the legislation now more likely to advance toward the August congressional recess than in early July.

For now, persistent ETF outflows across nearly every major cryptocurrency suggest institutional investors remain cautious as falling prices, macroeconomic uncertainty, and concerns surrounding Strategy continue to pressure digital asset markets.

Read More on SolanaFloor Solmate Board Under Scrutiny Over Alleged $18M Dilution of Shareholder Value
26 Solana Frontier Winners Revealed After Crypto’s Biggest Hackathon Ever

Has This Been Solana’s Biggest Mistake?

Solmate Infrastructure has lost about 98% of its market value since ARK Invest and Abu Dhabi-based Pulsar Group backed a $300m financing tied to its Solana treasury plan. 

Summary

Solmate shares collapsed after its football-to-Solana pivot tied public equity value closely to SOL prices. RockawayX-linked RBCH claims directors diluted shareholders while Solmate says the claims are retaliatory and false. The case lands before Solmate’s AGM where disputed shares may affect board voting power control. The Nasdaq-listed company, formerly Brera Holdings, traded near $4.72 on Friday after its sharp post-pivot selloff.

The company had run a football holding business with stakes across Italy, North Macedonia, Mozambique and Mongolia. It changed course in 2025, raising capital to build a Solana treasury and crypto infrastructure business in the United Arab Emirates. 

As previously reported, Solmate launched with $300m to establish a Solana treasury in the UAE with backing from ARK Invest, Pulsar Group, RockawayX and the Solana Foundation.

Solmate Shares Drop Over 98% After $300M Financing and Solana Treasury Pivot

Cathie Wood-backed Solmate has fallen more than 98% since completing a $300 million financing and pivoting to a Solana treasury strategy. Formerly known as Brera Holdings, Solmate announced its… pic.twitter.com/czn5GnosKc

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 26, 2026 Lawsuit adds pressure before AGM RBCH Ltd., an entity linked to RockawayX founder Viktor Fischer, filed a derivative lawsuit against Solmate’s officers and directors in New York. The complaint accuses the board of breach of fiduciary duty, shareholder oppression and self-dealing. RBCH says it owns more than 10% of Solmate and wants the court to block recently issued shares from being voted.

The lawsuit centers on share deals involving CEO Ron Sade and board member Keren Maimon. RBCH claims they bought about 2.3m new shares at $4.97 each, diluting shareholders by about 20%. It also says the deal came before the board rejected a Forward Industries proposal that valued Solmate at $7.19 per share.

Solmate rejects RockawayX claims Solmate has denied RBCH’s claims and framed the dispute as part of a failed business transaction. The company said it is trying to protect shareholders from what it called “a fraudulent campaign” linked to Fischer and RockawayX. RBCH later said Solmate’s response was “false, misleading, and a retaliatory response” to its lawsuit.

The fight comes ahead of Solmate’s June 26 annual general meeting in Abu Dhabi. RBCH wants shareholders to withhold support from Sade and Maimon. It also wants the court to reverse the disputed share transaction and review advisory and pay arrangements tied to directors. The case also follows leadership changes, including the departure of former CEO Marco Santori.

Football exits and treasury risks Solmate has also reduced its legacy football operations. Its teams in Mozambique and Mongolia were discontinued, while its stake in Italian club Juve Stabia was sold for €1 plus liabilities. The company reported a net loss of about €378,000 in 2025 and completed a one-for-ten reverse stock split in May to meet Nasdaq’s minimum bid price rule.

The company’s Solana strategy has faced the same pressure hitting other listed crypto treasury firms. SOL trades near $68, far below levels seen during the prior market cycle. As crypto.news reported, Solmate raised $11.4m in a premium stock offering in May as it kept building its treasury plan.

Previously, crypto.news explored how the crypto treasury boom split as Solana treasury firms faced losses. In a previous article, crypto.news discussed Forward Industries nearing a $1b Solana paper loss. Solmate now faces both market pressure and a boardroom dispute at the same time.

Somewhere between nostalgia for holographic Charizards and the relentless financialization of everything, a billion-dollar market was born. Solana’s onchain trading card game ecosystem has crossed $1 billion in cumulative trading volume, with over 10 billion cards printed across the network’s tokenized collectibles platforms.

The milestone was driven primarily by Collector Crypt, a platform that vaults real graded trading cards and lets users buy packs, reveal cards, trade tokenized assets, and redeem physical copies. The platform alone hit roughly $1.05 billion in cumulative transaction volume by May 20, 2026, approximately 18 months after launching its gacha mechanics in December 2024.

How a gacha mechanic turned cards into a crypto category Gacha spending on Solana hit $230 million in May 2026 alone, setting a new all-time record. The prior month wasn’t exactly quiet either, with April 2026 clocking $184 million in monthly gacha spend.

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Collector Crypt set another record in June 2026: 215,000 tokenized TCG packs opened in a single week. That’s roughly one pack opened every 2.8 seconds for seven straight days.

The platform has also facilitated around 50,000 physical card redemptions and shipments over its 18-month lifespan.

Solana’s quiet dominance in tokenized collectibles Solana has captured 63-64% of global onchain trading card game volume.

Broader onchain TCG trading volumes on Solana reached roughly $20 million weekly by mid-2025 and continued climbing into 2026. Protocol revenue for Collector Crypt alone crossed $50 million by June 2026.

A partnership with Solflare wallet in June 2026 added another growth vector, enabling in-wallet pack openings.

What this means for investors The current trajectory, with monthly gacha spend growing from $184 million in April to $230 million in May, suggests the market hasn’t hit saturation yet.

The $CARDS token, associated with Collector Crypt, has appreciated significantly alongside the platform’s activity growth.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Tokenized stocks trading on Solana reached $553 million in daily volume on June 24, marking a new all-time high for the category. These are tokenized versions of actual equities, trading on a blockchain, at volumes that would make some small-cap stock exchanges jealous.

The milestone caps off a stretch where Solana has quietly, then not so quietly, become the dominant venue for on-chain equity trading. During the week of June 15-21, Solana captured roughly 95-98% of all tokenized equity spot trading volume globally, with weekly volume hitting $1.298 billion.

The category has now reached $10 billion in cumulative transfer volume, and Solana is running the table.

What’s actually driving the volume The biggest name in this space right now is Backpack, which offers tokenized shares of companies including SpaceX through its SPCX token. On certain peak days, SPCX alone has exceeded $100 million in trading volume.

SpaceX is a particularly interesting case study here. It’s one of the most sought-after private companies on Earth, and traditional retail investors have essentially zero access to its shares. Tokenization changes that equation entirely, offering fractional ownership of an asset that was previously locked behind private market gates.

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Sunrise DeFi is another platform contributing to the momentum, and together these protocols are building out the infrastructure that makes 24/7 trading and DeFi integration possible. In English: you can trade a tokenized stock at 2 AM on a Sunday and potentially use it as collateral in a lending protocol.

The monthly volume across all chains for tokenized equities hit a record $5.3 billion in May 2026. Solana’s share of that pie has only grown since, suggesting June will comfortably surpass the previous month’s record.

Why Solana, and why now Solana’s dominance in this category isn’t accidental. The chain’s low transaction costs and high throughput make it naturally suited for the kind of frequent, smaller-sized trades that characterize retail equity participation. If you’re buying $50 worth of a tokenized stock, paying $15 in gas fees on Ethereum makes the trade economically absurd. On Solana, that friction essentially disappears.

Fractional ownership removes the barrier of high share prices. Round-the-clock trading removes the constraint of market hours. DeFi composability adds utility that a brokerage account simply doesn’t provide.

Unique wallets holding tokenized stocks on Solana have increased dramatically in recent periods, suggesting that the volume surge isn’t just a handful of whales churning positions. It reflects genuine broadening of the user base.

What this means for investors The $553 million daily volume figure matters because it represents a threshold. Tokenized equities on Solana are approaching volumes that demand attention from both traditional finance and crypto-native investors.

For the Solana ecosystem specifically, this is a significant narrative shift. The chain has spent much of the past two years associated with memecoin speculation and high-velocity token launches. Tokenized stocks represent the opposite end of the spectrum: real-world assets, relatively stable value propositions, and use cases that traditional investors can immediately understand.

There are real risks to watch. Regulatory clarity around tokenized securities remains a work in progress across most jurisdictions. The question of what legal rights a tokenized stock actually confers versus holding a share through a traditional transfer agent is not fully settled.

The concentration risk is also worth noting. When one chain handles 95-98% of a category’s volume, any Solana-specific issue becomes a systemic risk for the entire tokenized equity market. Diversification across chains hasn’t happened yet, and until it does, this remains a single point of failure that sophisticated investors should factor into their positioning.

Cumulative volume crossing $10 billion, monthly records being broken in consecutive months, and wallet counts expanding all point in one direction. Tokenized equities are transitioning from a niche crypto experiment to a genuine alternative market structure, and Solana is the venue where that transition is playing out in real time.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Paxos built PAXG to remove the operational overhead of holding gold. Storage, custody, and transfer are handled at the token level, backed 1:1 with the world’s finest gold and overseen by federal regulators, so holders get direct exposure to physical gold without the infrastructure burden that comes with it. As gold continues its strongest bull cycle in two decades, more investors are seeking the convenience of tokenized gold: lower-cost, faster to settle, and instantly transferable. PAXG has grown over 300% since 2024 and demand continues to increase. 

Today we're extending PAXG to Solana, the first step in PAXG's multi-chain expansion. You can find more information about where to buy PAXG on Solana here.

What Is PAXG?Pax Gold (PAXG) is a digital token where one token equals one fine troy ounce of physical gold. 

Each ounce is stored in London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) accredited vaults. The gold reserves are attested monthly by KPMG, providing token holders with regular, independent verification that every PAXG in circulation is fully backed by physical gold. In addition, the reserves undergo an annual physical audit conducted by Bureau Veritas, an independent inspection and certification body. This audit is limited to physical verification procedures performed on-site and does not constitute an attestation of ownership, valuation, or overall asset backing, but provides an additional layer of independent verification of the vaulted gold. If you hold PAXG, you hold the underlying physical gold under the legal custody of Paxos Trust Company, National Association.

We issue PAXG as a national trust bank regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), one of the most rigorous oversight frameworks available for a digital asset issuer. That regulatory posture is not incidental and sets us apart in the market. It means your gold is held under legal custody, with monthly public attestations and full bar-serial transparency through our Gold Allocation Lookup tool.

A few specifics that differentiate PAXG from other ways to own gold:

No custody fees. Gold ETFs charge 10 to 40 basis points per year just to hold your position. PAXG charges zero for storage.

Near-instant settlement. On-chain transfers settle in seconds, compared to T+1 for Gold ETFs and T+2 for LBMA bars.

Redeemable for physical bars, unallocated gold, or USD. PAXG is redeemable for LBMA Good Delivery gold bullion bars (requires holder to have 430 PAXG), unallocated Loco London Gold, or USD at current market price. This can be completed through the Paxos site.

No accredited investor gate, no brokerage account, no large bar minimums.

How Is PAXG Created?Every PAXG token begins with physical gold. When demand for PAXG increases, Paxos purchases unallocated gold from our supplier, which is then allocated to LBMA-accredited vaults in London as Good Delivery bars. Once the gold is vaulted, it is tokenized: PAXG tokens are minted on-chain and held in Paxos' inventory wallets. When a customer buys PAXG from Paxos directly, tokens transfer directly from Paxos inventory to their wallet.

Every token in circulation is backed by a specific, auditable bar of physical gold. The flow is always the same direction: gold enters the vault before tokens enter the market.

Why Solana, and Why NowPAXG launched on Ethereum in 2019. In the past two years, the number of holders more than doubled, and average holding size more than tripled from $7,000 to $26,000.

That growth signals the opportunity to expand PAXG into new ecosystems and put it in the hands of more builders and users.

Solana's real-world asset ecosystem crossed $2.5 billion in TVL in May 2026, up from $215 million just twelve months ago. Transaction fees average a fraction of a cent, with sub-second confirmation and 99.9%+ uptime over the past year. It is an ecosystem mature enough to support a regulated, allocated gold token immediately at launch, with an active DeFi base ready to integrate native assets.

We are partnering with Sunrise Defi on our Solana expansion to bring PAXG natively to the ecosystem with active DeFi markets across major Solana DEXs and seamless integration into Solana wallets and aggregators.

Solana is the start of our multi-chain expansion for PAXG. Every piece of infrastructure we are shipping in this launch is designed to extend cleanly to every chain that comes next.

How We Built the InfrastructureGetting here required one foundational upgrade and one new deployment. Both matter for Solana and for every chain that comes after.

ETH PAXG Contract Upgrade

Expanding to new chains starts at the contract level. We upgraded the PAXG token contracts to support omnichain functionality across both EVM and non-EVM networks, with an architecture designed to extend cleanly as we add more chains.

The upgraded contracts maintain all existing compliance controls, the same supply verification that underpins our monthly KPMG attestations, and full auditability of every token in circulation across every chain where PAXG is live.

The upgraded contracts are open source, independently audited by Zellic, and available for review in our PAXG GitHub repository.

Existing Ethereum holders can bridge directly through the Paxos platform or through

LayerZero Stargate

. No re-purchasing, no re-custodying, no new attestation required.

PAXG on Solana: The Token Implementation

The Solana deployment of PAXG is built on the Token-2022 program, Solana's extended token standard that enables native compliance controls at the token level.

This is the same standard Paxos used for PYUSD and USDG on Solana. It lets us enforce the same regulatory requirements that exist on Ethereum without relying on a separate contract layer to do it.

The Permanent Delegate extension ensures PAXG on Solana meets the same regulatory requirements as the Ethereum contract. The result is a Solana-native PAXG token that carries the same compliance posture and supply verifiability as the Ethereum original.

This Is the FoundationThe Solana launch is the first step in PAXG's multi-chain expansion. The contract upgrades and infrastructure we shipped today  are built to add new chains faster with less overhead each time.

Whether you're a builder integrating tokenized gold into a Solana application or an institutional investor looking to learn how to buy PAXG, reach out here to get started or learn more.  

Footnotes:

¹ Solana RWA TVL growth from $215M to $2.5B over twelve months as of May 2026. Source: RWA.xyz. Reported independently by MEXC News and CryptoNews.net.

² Solana lending markets reaching $3.6B: as of December 2025 per DeFiLlama. Verify current figures before publication at defillama.com/chain/Solana as lending TVL fluctuates.

³ Last officially confirmed major outage: February 6, 2024, per the Solana Foundation's June 2025 Network Health Report. As of mid-2025, Solana had gone over 16 consecutive months without a major confirmed outage. 

PAX Gold, the gold-backed token issued by Paxos, is now tradeable on Jupiter, Solana’s dominant DEX aggregator. The integration was made possible through Sunrise DeFi, a liquidity gateway built by Wormhole Labs that handles the messy plumbing of onboarding new assets to Solana.

PAXG is the first gold token regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to land on Solana.

How Sunrise makes it work Instead of forcing each new asset to negotiate with individual DEXes, liquidity providers, and block explorers one at a time, Sunrise bundles the entire onboarding process into a single pipeline. The result is day-one trading access the moment an asset goes live.

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A token like PAXG doesn’t have to sit in limbo for weeks while liquidity slowly materializes across fragmented venues. Sunrise pre-coordinates with Jupiter and other infrastructure partners, including the Solana block explorer Orb, so that trading and price discovery can happen immediately.

The platform has already tested this playbook with other assets. Bittensor’s TAO token was recently onboarded through the same process, suggesting that Sunrise is building a repeatable framework rather than a one-off integration.

Why gold on Solana matters PAXG is one of the more straightforward tokenized assets in crypto. Each token is backed by one fine troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold, held in Brinks vaults. Paxos, the issuer, operates under a New York State trust charter and is regulated by the OCC, which makes PAXG one of the few gold tokens with a clear regulatory pedigree.

Solana’s transaction fees are measured in fractions of a cent, and block times hover around 400 milliseconds.

What this means for investors Solana DeFi users can now trade a regulated gold token without bridging to Ethereum, paying Ethereum gas fees, or dealing with the latency of a slower network.

For Jupiter specifically, each new asset integration adds trading volume and fee revenue. Jupiter already dominates Solana’s DEX aggregation layer, and the Sunrise partnership effectively turns it into the default landing pad for cross-chain assets entering the ecosystem.

Wormhole, the bridge protocol behind Sunrise, suffered a high-profile exploit in 2022 that drained hundreds of millions of dollars. The team has overhauled its security since then, but the history is worth noting for anyone allocating significant capital through this pathway.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Exponent Finance just rolled out the feature that traditional finance has used for decades but DeFi has largely ignored: risk tranching. The Solana-based yield exchange launched its V2 platform on June 24, introducing a system that lets users pick their poison, either principal protection with modest returns or a higher-risk bet chasing outsized yield.

The first market uses ONyc, a reinsurance asset from OnReFinance, split into two tranches. The senior tranche (srONyc) targets roughly 6.4% APY with downside protection baked in. The junior tranche (jrONyc) aims for around 31.4% APY, absorbing more risk in exchange for the juicier number. In English: senior tranche holders get paid first if things go sideways, while junior tranche holders eat the losses first but collect bigger rewards when things go well.

How the tranching mechanics work Think of it like a layered cake where the bottom layer takes all the weight. Junior tranche depositors essentially cushion the senior tranche above them. If the underlying yield underperforms, junior holders absorb the shortfall before senior holders feel anything. If it overperforms, junior holders capture the excess.

The alpha phase launches with a $2.5 million cap, a deliberate constraint designed to stress-test the system with real capital before scaling up. Launch rewards exceeding $200K are available to early participants.

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Alongside the tranching product, V2 introduces Strategy Vaults and what Exponent calls an enhanced liquidity engine. Strategy Vaults are essentially pre-built portfolio positions that automate allocation across different yield opportunities. Rather than manually managing tranche positions, users can deposit into a vault that handles rebalancing according to a defined strategy.

Why this matters for Solana’s yield landscape The choice of a reinsurance asset as the first market is deliberate. Real-world asset (RWA) yields represent one of the fastest-growing segments in DeFi, and reinsurance specifically offers yield that’s uncorrelated with crypto market volatility. Pairing RWA yield with on-chain risk tranching creates a product that looks genuinely different from the usual lending-and-borrowing fare.

Exponent has been building toward this for a while. Since its mainnet launch in 2024, the protocol has recorded billions in trading volume without a security breach. The team has completed 12 tier-1 audits and allocated roughly $1 million specifically toward security measures.

On the funding side, Exponent has raised approximately $7.1 million in total. That includes a $2.1 million seed round in 2024 and a $5 million raise in April 2026.

What this means for investors Risk tranching isn’t a new concept in DeFi. Protocols like Tranche Finance and BarnBridge explored similar ideas during previous cycles, mostly on Ethereum. But adoption was limited, partly due to gas costs and partly because the underlying yield sources weren’t compelling enough to justify the added complexity.

For conservative investors, the senior tranche offers yield with a structural buffer against losses. For more aggressive participants, the junior tranche provides leveraged exposure to yield without the liquidation risk that comes with traditional leverage.

The $2.5 million cap on the alpha phase means this is still a small-scale experiment. Exponent plans to expand beyond the ONyc asset into other yield markets. The real test will be whether the tranching system maintains its target yields as more capital flows in and whether demand balances naturally between senior and junior tranches, because the whole structure depends on enough risk-hungry capital sitting in the junior layer to protect the conservative layer above it.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Solana stakers have collectively earned more than $1 billion this year. SOL Strategies wants to make sure that money flows through a healthier, more decentralized validator set.

The company, which trades on both NASDAQ under ticker STKE and the Canadian Securities Exchange as HODL, launched its liquid staking token STKESOL on January 20, 2026. At launch, more than 500,000 SOL were staked into the protocol. That figure has since climbed to roughly 691,000 SOL in total value locked.

How STKESOL actually works STKESOL gives SOL holders a tradeable token that accrues staking rewards relative to the underlying SOL. The token is built on Solana’s audited SPL Stake Pool Program, meaning holders can participate in DeFi applications while their original SOL continues earning staking rewards in the background.

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Rather than funneling everything to the biggest validators, STKESOL uses an algorithmic delegation model. The system routes stake to a diverse set of between 40 and 75 validators, selected through SOL Strategies’ proprietary Stakewiz Wiz Score methodology. That scoring system evaluates over 15 metrics across a 30-day window, covering factors like validator performance and contribution to decentralization.

DeFi integrations and revenue model SOL Strategies lined up integrations with several prominent Solana DeFi platforms at launch, including Orca, Squads, Kamino, and Loopscale.

Orca is one of Solana’s largest decentralized exchanges. Kamino focuses on automated liquidity strategies. Squads provides multisig infrastructure for teams and treasuries. Loopscale handles structured lending.

SOL Strategies generates revenue from STKESOL through two channels: fees on deposits into the staking pool and a share of the staking rewards generated by the underlying SOL.

The company has also been expanding its infrastructure footprint through acquisitions. SOL Strategies acquired Houdini Swap for $18 million and also brought Darklake/Zyga into its portfolio.

The VanEck connection SOL Strategies has been named a staking provider for the VanEck Solana ETF.

The risk side of the equation is worth considering. Liquid staking tokens introduce smart contract risk on top of the underlying staking risk. If there’s a bug in the SPL Stake Pool Program or if the Wiz Score methodology underperforms in selecting reliable validators, stakers could face losses or depeg scenarios. SOL Strategies notes the program has been audited, but audits reduce risk rather than eliminate it.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

In a positive development for the crypto community, the individual responsible for the GMX exploit accepted the platform’s bounty and returned over $40 million worth of assets stolen from the project.

Crypto Hacker Takes $42 Million From GMX On Friday, the recent GMX V1 exploit ended on a happy note after the individual responsible for the incident turned into a white-hat hacker. Perpetual and spot crypto exchange GMX lost over $40 million on Wednesday when an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the protocol’s first version on Arbitrum.

According to online reports, GMX V1’s vault contract had a vulnerability that allowed the attacker to manipulate the GLP token price through the system’s calculations.

Blockchain security firm SlowMist explained that “The root cause of this attack stems from GMX v1’s design flaw, where short position operations immediately update the global short average prices (globalShortAveragePrices), which directly impacts the calculation of Assets Under Management (AUM), thereby allowing manipulation of GLP token pricing.”

Through a reentrancy attack, they successfully established massive short positions to manipulate the global average prices, artificially inflating GLP prices within a single transaction and profiting through redemption operations.

As a result, approximately $42 million worth of assets, including Legacy Frax Dollar (FRAX), wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), wrapped ETH (WETH), and other tokens, were transferred from the GLP pool to an unknown wallet.

The perpetual crypto exchange halted GMX V1’s trading and GLP’s minting and redeeming on both Arbitrum and Avalanche to prevent another attack and protect users’ funds. However, they clarified that the exploit was limited to GMX’s V1 and its GLP pool. GMX V2, its markets, or liquidity pools, and the GMX token were not affected and remained safe.

White-Hat Claims $5 Million Bounty Following the incident, GMX sent a message on-chain and on X offering a $5 million white-hat bounty to the attacker, claiming that their abilities were “evident to anyone looking into the exploit transactions.”

GMX’s team noted that returning the funds within the next 48 hours and accepting the bounty would allow the hacker to “spend the funds freely,” instead of taking additional risks to access them. They also vowed not to pursue any legal action and to assist the exploiter in providing proof of source for the funds if it is ever required.

Today, the exploiter responded in an on-chain message, accepting the bounty and starting the return process. As Lookonchain reported, they initially returned $10.49 million worth of FRAX on Friday morning.

GMX exploiter accepts white-hat bounty. Source: Lookonchain on X Meanwhile, another $32 million worth of assets had been swapped into 11,700 ETH, which are now valued at $35 million after the King of Altcoins’ price jumped to the $2,990 mark.

In the following hours, the hacker returned 10,000 ETH, worth $30 million, keeping only 1,700 ETH, valued at $5.2 million, as the bounty.

GMX later confirmed that the funds have now been safely returned and thanked the white-hat hacker for their actions, ultimately giving a positive turn to the incident.

Lastly, they informed users that “contributors are working on a proposed distribution plan for presentation to the GMX DAO and will share more information shortly.”

GMX token trades at $13.24 in the one-week chart. Source: GMXUSDT on TradingView Featured Image from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com

TLDR Hackers extracted approximately $1.34 million from five dormant Raydium liquidity pools operating on Solana The breach resulted in the theft of around 150,000 RAY tokens, 5,600 SOL, and 893,700 USDC The vulnerability existed in an obsolete AMM program discontinued in 2021, leaving active pools untouched Raydium announced its treasury would provide complete restitution to all impacted participants Security firm PeckShield identified roughly 810 ETH of the pilfered assets flowing into Tornado Cash On June 10, Raydium, a Solana-based decentralized exchange, disclosed that malicious actors successfully exploited outdated infrastructure components, siphoning approximately $1.34 million worth of cryptocurrency.

The compromised liquidity pools had been inaccessible via Raydium’s user interface ever since the platform discontinued its AMM V3 program back in 2021. According to Raydium’s statement, neither current platform users nor any actively maintained liquidity pools experienced any impact.

How the Attack Happened On-chain security analyst Specter revealed that the perpetrators utilized a fraudulent mint address to circumvent security validation protocols within the inactive pool infrastructure. The core vulnerability stemmed from inadequate verification processes for LP mints, creating an opportunity to sidestep proportion validation mechanisms.

The assailant successfully withdrew approximately 150,177 RAY tokens, 5,603 SOL, and 893,700 USDC from the compromised pools. According to Specter’s investigation, the attacker initially received funding through the KuCoin exchange before transferring the illicit assets to the Ethereum blockchain.

PeckShield, a prominent blockchain security organization, monitored the movement of stolen cryptocurrency following its transfer to Ethereum. Their analysis revealed that approximately 810 ETH was funneled into Tornado Cash, while an additional seven ETH moved through FixedFloat.

Notably, Tornado Cash was delisted from U.S. Treasury Department sanctions in March 2025. Nevertheless, the utilization of this privacy protocol may continue to present obstacles for investigators attempting to recover or trace the diverted funds.

Raydium Will Reimburse All Losses Raydium has publicly committed to utilizing its treasury reserves to compensate all financial damages stemming from this security breach. While the protocol emphasized that no current active users suffered losses, some participants maintained residual exposure through the deprecated pool contracts.

This marks the second occasion where Raydium has pledged to absorb user losses. Following an admin key security breach in December 2022 that affected operational pools, the project implemented a governance-approved compensation plan utilizing buyback fee revenue and vested team token allocations to restore liquidity provider funds.

The development team confirmed that all currently deployed mainnet programs remain secure and are presently undergoing comprehensive independent security audits.

Market response to the incident proved minimal. Raydium traded around $0.57, experiencing less than a 1% decline during the 24-hour window after the exploit became public. Solana experienced a modest drop of nearly 2%, settling around $63.88 throughout the identical timeframe.

The RAY token demonstrated resilience, actually gaining more than 2% on the day news of the security breach emerged.

Raydium clarified that both its SDK and decentralized application infrastructure lack functionality for interacting with the legacy AMM V3 pools on the mainnet, effectively confirming the attack remained isolated to decommissioned code.

Security researchers from PeckShield and Specter maintain ongoing efforts to track the movement of stolen digital assets. According to currently available blockchain data, the exploitation remained entirely confined to obsolete infrastructure components without penetrating Raydium’s operational trading ecosystem.

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Axelar has integrated Solana. The integration is now live on mainnet, enabling cross-chain message passing and asset transfers between Solana and Axelar-supported chains, including Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Sui, Stellar, Hedera, and 70+ more ecosystems.

Following recent integrations with Stellar and Hedera, Solana is the next major ecosystem connected to Axelar’s interoperability infrastructure. The integration expands Axelar’s support across different execution environments and gives developers, asset issuers, and protocols a secure and reliable way to connect Solana with the broader multichain world.

What the Integration EnablesSolana is one of the most vibrant blockchain ecosystems in Web3, with a growing application layer across DeFi, payments, tokenization, and consumer use cases. With Solana connected through Axelar, applications can combine Solana’s speed, low transaction costs, and active application ecosystem with Axelar’s interoperability infrastructure. The result is new optionality for applications that want to reach broader liquidity, expand user access across chains, and build multichain products that connect Solana with the wider ecosystems.

Ecosystem Partners Expanding to SolanaThe Solana integration launches with day-one ecosystem use cases that demonstrate how Axelar can help bring assets and applications into the Solana ecosystem.

Stronghold is a payments infrastructure platform that enables access to both legacy and next-generation financial services, with $SHx serving as its native utility token. Through Axelar's integration with Solana, Stronghold can now extend SHx reach to Solana and gain access to a broader ecosystem of users, builders, and liquidity opportunities beyond the Stellar ecosystem.

SaucerSwap is a leading decentralized exchange on Hedera, providing trading and liquidity infrastructure optimized for efficient execution and low fees. With Axelar connecting Solana, SaucerSwap can support assets from Solana and other connected blockchains and bring them into Hedera-based trading and liquidity pools. The integration also opens a new path for $SAUCE to extend beyond its native environment into the Solana ecosystem.

How to Access Solana Through AxelarSolana is now connected to Axelar and can be accessed through:

Axelar’s new bridging interface: Users can move assets to and from Solana directly through Axelar’s interface.Squid: Users and developers can access Solana through Squid, a cross-chain routing and liquidity layer built on Axelar that enables seamless asset transfers across ecosystems.Moreover, developers can now start building cross-chain applications with Solana: Send & receive messages across chains | Interchain Token Transfers | Full documentation

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Access Protocol’s ACX token surged after unveiling Creator Coins on Solana, a new monetization model for digital creators. 

Summary

Access Protocol launched Creator Coins on Solana, powered by Proof of Audience and Raydium Launchlab. ACX surged over 100% intraday, with volume spiking 10,909%. Creator Coins reward early supporters and provide creators with sustainable revenue models. Creator Coins operate like memecoins but are directly tied to individual creators, offering a tokenized way to align incentives between communities and the talent they follow.

The announcement was made on Aug. 25, 2025, in a post on X and an official press release by Access Protocol (ACX).

Unique Proof of Audience Model Unlike speculative launches with no built-in demand, Access has embedded a Proof of Audience system that sets milestones before any coin can go live. These milestones ensure creators show genuine traction.

https://twitter.com/accessprotocol/status/1959974226409959869?s=46&t=nznXkss3debX8JIhNzHmzw

They include a minimum number of stakers, pool scores, and staking thresholds. Once those conditions are satisfied, token allocations are given to supporters, and creators receive their share, which is vested over a two-year period.

The goal of this strategy is to balance community benefits with long-term creator income. Tokens are tradeable from day one, while Access has also layered in a Creator Token Incentive Program that sends millions of ACS tokens to creators, stakers, and traders every month.

The launch is supported by Raydium’s (RAY) Launchlab on Solana (SOL), ensuring liquidity and tradability from day one. Creator tokens distribute 10% of the supply to early supporters, while creators receive 20% vested over two years.

Market reaction and ecosystem impact Following the news, ACX price rallied more than 100%, climbing from roughly $0.00108 to a high of $0.00223 before retracing. As of this writing, ACX is still up 16% for the day and has shown comparable gains throughout the week. 

Additionally, trading activity increased significantly. In the last 24 hours, the daily volume increased by 10,909% to $95 million, indicating a renewed interest in the Access Protocol ecosystem.

The market’s reaction shows a high level of interest in both ACX and the larger Creator Coin concept. Access is establishing itself as a competitor to subscription-based platforms such as Patreon by linking token utility to creators and their audiences, while also capitalizing on the trading culture that has propelled Solana’s expansion.

Gold-backed crypto sounds straightforward until you check the redemption rules, custody setup, and issuer terms. In practice, two tokens may track the same ounce of gold while offering very different rights to the holder.

That gap between price exposure and holder rights is drawing more attention in 2026 as tokenized gold trading volume rises and products like Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) pull in more activity across crypto markets. This guide explains how tokenized gold works, how PAXG and XAUT differ, and what buyers should check before they treat a token like physical bullion.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
➤ Tokenized gold tracks physical bullion, but holder rights, redemption terms, and custody structures can differ sharply between issuers.
➤ Tokenized gold trading volume reached $90.7 billion in Q1 2026, with PAXG and XAUT leading the category’s growth.
➤ Issuer risk, redemption limits, wallet controls, and regional regulations still affect how tokenized gold works in practice.
➤Tokenized gold gives crypto users 24/7 transferability and wallet access, but it does not remove traditional gold-market risks.

In this guide:

What is tokenized gold? How gold-backed crypto works in 2026PAXG vs. XAUT, side by sideDo you own real gold with PAXG and XAUT?Can you redeem PAXG and XAUT for physical gold?Tokenized gold vs. gold ETFs vs physical bullionTokenized gold risks and how to mitigate themHow to buy tokenized gold in 2026Frequently Asked Questions What is tokenized gold? How gold-backed crypto works in 2026 Tokenized gold is a digital token issued on a blockchain that is backed by physical gold stored in audited vaults. Gold has long attracted buyers who want a hard asset outside fiat currencies, but physical settlement, storage, and transfers can be slow or expensive.

This “tokenized” model has brought two markets together that rarely interacted in the past. One is physical gold, which offers a 5,000-year store-of-value record but settles slowly, trades on dealer hours, and is hard to fractionalize. The other is public blockchains, which can settle transactions in seconds, run 24/7, and split assets into tiny units.

A gold-backed token bridges the two by locking real bullion with a custodian and minting transferable claims on it.

What is a troy ounce and London Good Delivery gold?

A troy ounce is the standard unit used in global precious-metals markets and equals about 31.1 grams. “London Good Delivery” refers to large gold bars that meet quality and purity standards accepted by major bullion markets, central banks, and institutional traders.

How tokenization works An issuer such as Paxos or TG Commodities acquires physical gold from refiners or bullion dealers and stores it with a professional custodian. The issuer then creates a matching amount of blockchain-based tokens tied to that gold reserve. Token holders can buy, sell, transfer, or self-custody the assets like other crypto tokens.

When holders redeem tokens through the issuer, the corresponding amount of gold leaves the reserve pool and may be sold, transferred, or delivered physically if redemption minimums are met. Independent attestors or audit firms publish reserve reports on a scheduled basis to verify that the token supply matches the underlying gold holdings.

Why tokenized gold is exploding in 2026 Adoption has accelerated through 2025 and into 2026 as real-world asset (RWA) tokenization moved from pilots to live products. Tokenized gold achieved $90.70 billion in total spot trading volume in Q1 2026, surpassing the $84.64 billion traded throughout 2025, according to CoinGecko’s RWA Report 2026.

Meanwhile, on March 19, 2026, the World Gold Council and Boston Consulting Group proposed a “Gold as a Service” framework designed to standardize custody, reconciliation, compliance, and redemption processes across digital gold products.

Tokenized gold is not a stablecoin. Its price moves with the spot price of gold, so holders gain or lose value as bullion rallies or falls. The “stability” only refers to the 1:1 backing, not a fixed dollar peg.

The combination of rising gold prices, clearer rules in some jurisdictions, and on-chain demand for non-dollar collateral has produced what looks like a structural rather than cyclical lift.

The tokenized gold market includes smaller products such as Kinesis Gold (KAU), Comtech Gold (CGO), VeraOne (VRO), and Matrixdock Gold (XAUM). Even so, market activity and liquidity remain concentrated around Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT), which makes them useful reference points for how large-scale gold-backed tokens currently operate.

Top tokenized gold products by market cap: CoinGecko PAXG vs. XAUT, side by side Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) together hold roughly nine-tenths of the gold-backed token market. They follow the same backing standard, but their regulator, chain support, audit cadence, redemption process, and US availability are not the same.

AttributePAXGXAUTIssuerPaxos Trust CompanyTG Commodities Limited (Tether)RegulatorOCC, U.S. federal oversight; previously NYDFSCNAD, El SalvadorBacking1 token = 1 troy ounce LBMA Good Delivery1 token = 1 troy ounce LBMA Good DeliveryVault locationBrink’s vaults, LondonSwiss vaults via MKS PAMP and LoomisAuditor and cadenceKPMG LLP, monthlyBDO Italia, quarterly ISAE 3000ChainsEthereum (ERC-20)Ethereum, TRON, Polygon, Solana via LayerZero, BNB ChainIssuance and redemption feeTiered 1% down to 0.125%Flat 0.25%Minimum physical redemption430 tokens for a full bar, 1 gram and up via Alpha Bullion430 tokens for a full bar, no fractional partnerOwnership typeAllocated gold with Paxos bar lookupUndivided gold rights with Tether Gold bar lookupReserve and oracle supportPaxos attestations, allocation lookup, and Chainlink reserve-related infrastructureTether Gold attestations, wallet/bar lookup, and Chainlink XAUT/USD market-data feedsUS retail availabilityListed on Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Crypto.comRestricted, not directly available to US retailMarket cap (May 2026)About $2.2 billion per CoinGeckoAbout $2.6 to $2.7 billion per CoinGecko Pax Gold at a glance PAXG launched in September 2019, when Paxos operated under its NYDFS trust-company framework. Paxos later received approval to convert to a national trust charter overseen by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Current PAXG terms say PAXG is issued pursuant to specific OCC approval.

Paxos assures that the underlying gold is stored in Brink’s vaults in London, and each PAXG token is linked to a specific serial-numbered gold bar that holders can verify through Paxos’ allocation lookup tool. KPMG took over the monthly attestation in February 2025, replacing WithumSmith+Brown, and the reports are published on the Paxos site.

Tether Gold at a glance XAUT was launched by TG Commodities Limited in January 2020 and is now operated under a license from El Salvador’s National Digital Assets Commission, known by its Spanish initials CNAD.

The bullion is stored in Swiss vaults, with MKS PAMP and Loomis named in TG Commodities’s attestation materials. XAUT launched on Ethereum and TRON before expanding to additional networks through the XAUT0 cross-chain system. Tether later announced Polygon, Solana, and BNB Chain integrations between late 2025 and early 2026.

BDO Italia issues an ISAE 3000 opinion on the reserves on a quarterly basis.

Fees, audits, and oracle data PAXG’s fee structure has changed over time. As of May 2026, Paxos advertises zero on-chain transfer fees and zero storage fees for PAXG, although its terms still reserve the right to impose storage fees in the future with notice. Its terms also govern conversions into USD, unallocated gold, or allocated gold through the Paxos platform.

XAUT says it charges no custodian fee and applies a one-time 25 basis point fee when verified customers purchase or redeem XAU₮ through TG Commodities.

Chainlink has supported reserve-related infrastructure for PAXG, while Chainlink also provides XAUT/USD market-data feeds. A price feed is not the same as a reserve feed. In both cases, users still need to check issuer attestations, custody disclosures, and official lookup tools rather than relying on oracle data alone.

Do you own real gold with PAXG and XAUT? The short answer is that both products describe gold ownership, but the issuer structure, custody chain, legal terms, and redemption process are not the same.

PAXG gives holders ownership rights to allocated London Good Delivery gold held under Paxos custody. XAUT gives holders undivided ownership rights to gold on specified bars, with bar details available through Tether Gold’s lookup system.

The practical question is not only whether gold backs the token, but how each issuer records, verifies, and redeems that claim.

How ownership is recorded PAXG uses an allocated-gold structure. Paxos says each PAXG represents one fine troy ounce of a London Good Delivery gold bar held in professional vaults. Its terms also say that when a holder is not allocated a full bar, the holder owns a pro rata share of that bar based on their PAXG balance. Paxos’ lookup tool lets eligible on-chain holders view bar details tied to their holdings.

XAUT uses a different legal structure. Tether Gold says XAU₮ gives holders undivided ownership rights to gold on specified bars. It also says the allocated gold is identifiable by serial number, purity, and weight through Tether Gold’s lookup system.

So, the cleaner distinction is not “specific bar versus pool.” Both products describe a bar-level link. The real differences come from issuer structure, custodian arrangements, jurisdiction, disclosure cadence, redemption rules, and the legal terms behind each token.

Bankruptcy remoteness and counterparty risk The difference matters most if the issuer fails. Paxos Trust Company is a New York limited-purpose trust company that holds the bullion as a bailee, a structure designed to be bankruptcy remote, meaning the bullion would not be available to general creditors.

TG Commodities is a private Tether subsidiary under El Salvadoran oversight rather than a US trust company, which leaves the holder’s claim subject to El Salvadoran insolvency rules.

As of May 2026, neither structure has faced a major issuer failure or large-scale court test, so the legal outcome in a stress event remains untested.

Insurance and custody disclosures Paxos says each PAXG is backed by one fine troy ounce of gold held in LBMA vaults in London. Its allocation lookup tool lets holders of PAXG in on-chain Ethereum wallets view serial-number and bar information, though the tool does not apply to tokens held through custodial exchanges or wallets. Paxos also publishes monthly PAXG attestation reports.

XAUT’s terms refer to custodian insurance, but the public disclosures do not itemize coverage at the same level of detail. XAUT’s terms refer to custodian insurance, but they also say there is no assurance that the custodian will maintain adequate insurance, or any insurance.

The public terms do not give the same bar-level insurance detail that a cautious buyer may want before they rely on insurance as a risk control. Holders should review the latest issuer terms, reserve reports, and custody disclosures before they treat insurance as meaningful protection.

Allocated ownership is one of the strongest legal protections available in the gold market, but it depends entirely on the custody chain functioning as advertised. Always read the latest attestation rather than relying on marketing language.

Can you redeem PAXG and XAUT for physical gold? Eligible verified holders can redeem both PAXG and XAUT for physical bullion, but the rules are not necessarily retail-friendly in the same way.

PAXG supports direct full-bar redemption through Paxos and smaller physical-gold redemptions through partnered retailers. XAUT redemptions, by contrast, occur through TG Commodities and must be tied to full gold bars.

PAXG redemption Paxos says holders can convert PAXG into USD, unallocated gold, or allocated gold through the Paxos platform, subject to its terms.

Direct allocated-gold redemption requires at least 430 PAXG plus the applicable fee for each London Good Delivery gold bar. Paxos also says customers with smaller holdings can redeem fractional amounts through partnered gold retailers.

Alpha Bullion, a platform tied to Bullion Exchanges and Paxos, says it lets PAXG holders redeem physical gold in sizes from 1 gram to 1 kilogram.

Note that Alpha Bullion requires account verification before order fulfillment. Because product availability, fees, taxes, and delivery terms can change, holders should check Alpha Bullion’s current checkout terms before they treat PAXG as an easy route to small physical-gold delivery.

XAUT redemption XAUT redemption follows a relatively stricter process. Tether Gold says only KYC-verified customers can redeem through the Tether Gold website, and redemptions can occur only for full gold bars. Since those bars usually range from about 385 to 415 fine troy ounces, holders are generally asked to deposit at least 430 XAU₮ to cover a full-bar redemption.

After redemption, the gold can be delivered to the verified customer’s chosen location in Switzerland, with delivery costs payable by the customer. Tether Gold says it does not currently offer delivery outside Switzerland.

Instead of physical delivery, a verified customer may ask Tether Gold to attempt a sale of the gold bar in the Swiss gold market and return the USD proceeds, minus the redemption fee. That sale is subject to available rates and counterparties, and Tether Gold says it has no obligation to repurchase the tokens or gold bars.

How to verify your gold on-chain Both issuers offer on-chain transparency tools. For PAXG, holders enter an Ethereum address into the Paxos lookup page and see the serial numbers of the underlying bars. For XAUT, the Tether site shows the gold attributed to a wallet at a given time.

These tools can help holders check issuer-level allocation data, while Chainlink infrastructure can support market-data or reserve-related checks depending on the token. Users should still treat issuer attestations, custody disclosures, and official lookup tools as the main sources for reserve verification.

That is the redemption side. The next question is how tokenized gold stacks up against the alternatives most investors already know.

Tokenized gold vs. gold ETFs vs physical bullion Tokenized gold is right there in between two long-established options. The table below compares the three on the dimensions that drive most allocation decisions.

AttributeTokenized gold (PAXG, XAUT)Gold ETFs (GLD, IAU, GLDM)Physical bullionCustodyLBMA vault held by issuer custodianLBMA vault held by ETF trusteeSelf-custody or third-party vaultTrading hours24/7/365Stock market hoursDealer hoursAnnual fee0% storage, 0.125% to 1% issuance and redemption0.17% to 0.40% expense ratioDealer spread plus storage and insuranceSettlementSeconds, on-chainT+1Same day at dealerRedemption for physicalYes, with minimumsNo, cash settlement onlyAlready physicalDeFi useCollateral, lending, yieldNoneNoneUS tax treatmentProperty treatment likely, still developingCollectibles 28% per IRS guidanceCollectibles 28% per IRS guidance Fee math at retail scale Headline fees can look simple until you apply them to a real position size. For example, take a $10,000 PAXG buy held for 12 months. If that order falls into Paxos’ 2–25 PAXG fee tier, the 1% entry fee comes to about $100.

Paxos currently advertises zero on-chain transfer fees and zero storage fees for PAXG.

If the position is sold or converted through the Paxos wallet at the same fee tier, the exit fee would add another $100. That puts the direct Paxos round-trip cost at about $200 on a $10,000 position held for one year, before spreads, gas, taxes, exchange fees, or any third-party platform costs.

Cost note: This example assumes direct Paxos wallet creation and sale or conversion at the 1% fee tier. If you buy or sell PAXG through an exchange, your actual cost may come from trading fees, spreads, withdrawal costs, and venue-specific rules instead.

A $10,000 GLD position over the same period pays the 0.40% expense ratio, or about $40, before any broker-specific costs. A $10,000 GLDM position is cheaper still at 0.10%, or roughly $10 for the year.

On direct fees alone, a lower-cost gold ETF such as GLDM can be much cheaper than a direct PAXG round trip at the 1% tier. PAXG’s case becomes stronger only if the holder values features an ETF cannot provide, such as crypto-wallet custody, around-the-clock transfers, DeFi use, or PAXG-specific redemption routes.

Tax treatment In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service classifies physical gold and most gold ETFs as collectibles, which carry a long-term capital gains rate of up to 28% rather than the standard 20%.

As of May 2026, tokenized gold is in a less settled position. Some practitioners argue it should follow the underlying asset and be treated as a collectible, while others apply general property rules for digital assets. UK, EU, and UAE treatments vary and depend on whether the holder uses an exchange domiciled in a regulated venue.

Always confirm with a tax professional before relying on any single framing.

Tokenized gold in DeFi The structural advantage of tokenized gold over an ETF is on-chain usability. PAXG is listed as collateral on the Aave deployment on Ethereum and trades in Curve and Uniswap pools, while XAUT has integrations on TRON-based DeFi venues and emerging yield vaults on platforms such as Falcon Finance.

Yields available in 2026 have ranged from low single digits to mid single digits, depending on the pool and risk tier, with strategies that wrap gold collateral into lending or basis trades.

Tokenized gold risks and how to mitigate them The risks attached to tokenized gold are not the same as the risks attached to physical bullion or to an ETF. Buyers should weigh three categories before committing.

Issuer and depeg risk Both PAXG and XAUT depend on a single issuer to honor redemptions and report reserves. A failure at Paxos or TG Commodities would cap the value of the token at whatever a court determined was the holder’s claim on the bullion.

Token prices can also drift from spot during stress events. PAXG traded at a premium to spot during the February 2025 London bullion shortage as physical delivery times stretched, an episode that reminded the market that on-chain liquidity does not always equal physical liquidity.

Smart contract, sanctions, and wallet freezing PAXG and XAUT contracts both include administrative functions that allow the issuer to freeze tokens in specific wallets. Paxos has used the function to comply with US sanctions enforcement, and Tether has frozen XAUT-related addresses tied to flagged activity. The functions exist for legitimate compliance reasons, but they mean a holder who trips a sanctions flag could lose access to their tokens.

Both tokens can be frozen by the issuer. A buyer who values censorship resistance above gold exposure should consider physical bullion or self-custody alternatives instead.

Regulatory risk Paxos previously operated under NYDFS oversight and is now OCC-regulated as a national trust institution.

XAUT has a narrower U.S. retail access path. Tether Gold says U.S. persons cannot purchase or redeem XAU₮ directly through its issuer platform, which means U.S. users should not assume they can access issuer-level redemption features.

In the European Union, MiCA rules for asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens became applicable on June 30, 2024, while broader crypto-asset service provider rules followed on Dec. 30, 2024. Paxos says it operates under MiCA compliance through FIN-FSA in the EU, but its current PAXG page also says PAXG is unavailable in the EU.

Put simply, access can depend on the issuer, exchange, user location, and product feature. So, as a buyer, you should check current exchange notices and issuer disclosures before they assume PAXG or XAUT is available in the jurisdiction you are in.

How to buy tokenized gold in 2026 Tokenized gold trades on both centralized exchanges and on-chain venues. Most retail buyers start on a centralized exchange for the smoothest path, then move tokens to self-custody or a DeFi position if they want to use the gold as collateral.

Buying on a centralized exchange PAXG is listed on Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, Binance, and Bitpanda, among others. The standard flow is to fund an account with fiat, place a market or limit order against the PAXG pair, and either keep the tokens on the exchange or withdraw them to a personal wallet.

XAUT is listed on a smaller set of venues, with Bitfinex and several non-US exchanges providing the deepest order books. US residents typically cannot buy XAUT directly through a domestic exchange.

Buying on a DEX On Ethereum, PAXG can be bought on Uniswap and Curve pools using ether or a stablecoin, though gas costs and pool depth should be checked before larger trades.

XAUT liquidity tends to sit in TRON-based and non-EVM venues, which makes the operational steps more involved. Buyers who use a DEX should always verify the token contract address from the issuer’s official site to avoid scam tokens.

Other gold-backed tokens worth knowing PAXG and XAUT dominate the market, but several other gold-backed tokens are worth knowing. Kinesis Gold (KAU) and Kinesis Silver (KAG) pay a share of network fees back to holders, which gives them a yield profile unlike PAXG or XAUT. CACHE Gold (CGT) uses a fractional-gram model with on-chain bar serial assignment.

AurusX (AWG) and Matrixdock XAUM are relatively newer entrants targeting cross-jurisdictional retail demand. Comtech Gold (CGO) markets a Shariah-compliant structure aimed at Middle East and South Asian buyers.

Note that liquidity for these smaller tokens is thinner, so always check the on-chain market depth before committing.

Frequently Asked Questions What is tokenized gold and how does it work? Tokenized gold is a digital token on a blockchain that represents ownership of physical gold held in an audited vault. Each token typically equals one troy ounce of London Good Delivery bullion held by a custodian on behalf of the issuer. Holders can transfer the token like any other crypto asset and, in some cases, redeem it for physical metal when minimums and verification rules are met.

Do you own real gold with PAXG? Yes. PAXG uses an allocated ownership model in which each token is mapped to a portion of a specific London Good Delivery bar identified by serial number. Paxos publishes a lookup tool that lets a wallet holder view the bars assigned to their address. The bullion is held in Brink’s vaults in London and is described by Paxos as legally separate from the company’s general balance sheet.

Can you redeem PAXG for physical gold? Yes, with two paths. A holder with 430 PAXG or more can redeem directly through Paxos for a full London Good Delivery bar, subject to Paxos’ terms. Holders below that threshold can use Alpha Bullion’s partner route for smaller physical-gold redemptions from 1 gram upward, subject to identity verification, product availability, taxes, delivery terms, and any current checkout costs.

Can you redeem XAUT for physical gold? Yes, but only at the full-bar level and only in Switzerland. A holder must accumulate at least 430 XAUT, complete identity verification with TG Commodities, and arrange Swiss delivery or cash settlement at spot. There is no fractional retail partner equivalent to Alpha Bullion, so most XAUT holders treat the token as a price exposure rather than a redemption vehicle.

What is the difference between PAXG and XAUT? The main differences are issuer structure, regulatory profile, chain support, audit cadence, and redemption rules. Paxos previously operated under NYDFS oversight and is now OCC-regulated as a national trust institution. PAXG uses monthly attestations and links holdings to allocated London Good Delivery gold. XAUT is issued through TG Commodities, operates under El Salvador’s CNAD framework, uses quarterly assurance reports, and gives holders undivided gold rights with Tether Gold’s bar lookup system. PAXG is Ethereum-based, while XAUT is available across several networks.

Is tokenized gold safe and what are the main risks? Tokenized gold inherits the price behavior of physical gold and adds three risk categories on top. Issuer risk covers the potential failure of Paxos or TG Commodities, smart contract risk covers code or governance failures, and sanctions risk covers the issuer’s ability to freeze tokens in flagged wallets. Holders mitigate these risks by reading the latest attestations, splitting positions across issuers, and avoiding behavior that could trigger a wallet freeze.