Howdy!

It’s a Friday, DAS was a big success, and my March Madness bracket is ranked second in my bracket pool. Let’s have a weekend, folks. 

Today, we’ve got my ruminations on institutions, Solana futures ETF flows, and an ICYMI from this wild week.

What are institutions, anyway?

Yesterday marked the end of Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit, where attendees seemed doggedly bullish on the reality of institutional crypto adoption — but somewhat vague on the particulars.

The Solana faithful showed real belief in stablecoins — the network’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko during our panel called them “the most disruptive thing that crypto’s built.” There was also real belief in spot SOL ETFs gaining the SEC’s approval as soon as CME futures — and the first SOL futures ETFs — began trading. But above all, I left with the impression that crypto can be imprecise when it refers to institutions.

Institutional adoption can probably be broken down roughly into two buckets: institutions gaining exposure to crypto assets and institutions using crypto technologies for their existing businesses. The first is certainly bullish for crypto asset prices, although Crypto Twitter seems to have rather outsized expectations in this area. Bitcoin plummeted once investors found out a strategic bitcoin reserve wouldn’t mean the US government market buying bitcoin. 

The second, I would think, is more of a mixed bag. If institutions were to use stablecoins for cheaper and faster money transmission, then that sounds like a win. But outside of a few examples, that kind of thing doesn’t appear to be happening much. Crypto tech is also useful for speculation, and institutions adding crypto to their business portfolios could just look like major asset managers pumping liquidity into the casino.

“Every asset manager and bank doing ‘crypto’ is earning insane fees for putting things ‘onchain’ [i.e.] holding treasuries, or in the case of TRUMP, selling retail crypto pipe dreams,” read a slide from Crucible VC’s Meltem Demirors’ DAS kickoff talk.

Even if they’re not so malevolent, institutional crypto plays can feel more like marketing than real business. Franklin Templeton has an onchain mutual fund, for instance, that connects with Solana. I’m not sure what makes this product necessary nor why so much of it has been minted on the Stellar network. 

But lest I be too bearish on a Friday, I’ll note that the DAS bonhomie wasn’t meaningless. Industry folks I spoke with seemed to be experiencing a dealmaking frenzy. I heard it remarked that following all the years of halfhearted crypto initiatives from TradFi, 2025 is different, and the institutions are actually serious now. We’ll just have to wait and see what that means exactly.

— Jack Kubinec

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178,200

That’s how many combined shares the first Solana futures ETFs traded on the first day.

Volatility Shares’ 2x Solana futures ETF proved more popular than its vanilla counterpart, although 2x buyers are down more overall so far as SOL’s price has declined the past couple days.

Also, those aren’t very inspiring inflows. Volatility Shares’ 2x bitcoin ETF saw 6.5 million shares trade on the first day of Solana futures ETF trading.

— Jack Kubinec

ICYMI — Stories you may have missed from Solana land this week

• Solana Mobile’s next-gen crypto phone has officially entered testing. The Seeker will begin shipping this summer, building on the Saga’s momentum with upgraded specs, a slimmer form factor, and a new Seed Vault wallet integration in partnership with Solflare. It's on track to outpace its predecessor (over 150,000 preorders so far) and further entrench Solana’s mobile-first ambitions.

• Phantom has been warning users of a new malware threat uncovered by Microsoft that’s targeting 20+ crypto wallet extensions on Chrome, including Phantom itself. Known as StilachiRAT, the malware can extract private keys and login credentials by monitoring clipboard activity and browser-stored data, while evading traditional detection tools. 

• Arcium, a confidential computing protocol built on Solana, is launching its public testnet on April 30. Arc 2 introduces a system where apps can run in fully encrypted environments. This release also brings in validators and early apps built around privacy. It’s a key step in making onchain privacy a native feature of Solana.

• Pipe Network has crossed 130,000 node operators worldwide, scaling its decentralized CDN into one of the largest on Solana. Instead of relying on centralized data hubs like Cloudflare, Pipe lets anyone run a node to serve content locally — boosting speed, privacy and resilience. It’s a pretty ambitious play to rebuild internet delivery from the ground up.

• Jupiter Exchange now supports pump.fun’s new AMM, PumpSwap, that lets users buy and sell freshly launched tokens directly on Jupiter Spot. It’s a small back-end shift with big UX implications, cutting out the need to bounce over to Raydium or other venues just to trade memecoins. The change moves Jupiter closer to being a one-stop shop for new token activity.

— Jeffrey Albus

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