💯 A for ETFort

Howdy!

It’s Jeff’s day to write the feature, which means he’s also supposed to write this intro. But he hates having to come up with fun non-sequiturs to open on, so he’s just not gonna do it.

Today, we’ve got the first-ever staking ETF, new liquidity around tokenized stocks on Solana, and one chart that says everything there is to be said about SOL’s fee dominance.

Did the SEC just OK the first Solana staking ETF?

On Friday, the SEC informed REX Shares and Osprey Funds that it had “no further comments” on their solana staking ETF filing.

In ETF regulatory parlance, industry watchers often view that phrase as the SEC’s implicit greenlight. It’s the same wink and a nod that preceded the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, and others.

Essentially, the review is done. Fire when ready. According to a post on X, the fund will begin trading this Wednesday, July 2.

The product, officially titled the REX-Osprey Solana and Staking ETF, would be the first US ETF to offer investors exposure to Solana’s price movements alongside native staking rewards.

Unlike traditional crypto trusts, this ETF is structured under the Investment Company Act of 1940 using a C-corporation format, which allows staking income to flow through to investors without triggering regulatory red flags around yield, taxation, or custody.

That structure was the hurdle.

When treated as ordinary income, staking rewards had proven incompatible with trust-based fund models, which couldn’t easily distribute variable staking yields.

On May 30, the SEC asked REX and Osprey to delay the effective date of their registration statements, citing unresolved concerns over whether the proposed fund structures met the definition of an “investment company” under the 1940 Act.

Bloomberg’s James Seyffart noted at the time that the funds’ “unique” C-corp format could bypass the typical 19b-4 rule-change process, and the SEC’s silence on the C-corp workaround now appears to validate it as a compliant solution.

REX Shares, stretching for its victory lap, has already begun publicly teasing the ETF as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, analysts like Eric Balchunas weighed in: “They are good to launch it looks like. Wow,” he posted on X.

Until now, access to staking meant handing tokens over to a crypto exchange or configuring your own validator setup. This ETF dramatically lowers that barrier.

For the first time, traditional investors may gain passive Solana exposure plus staking yields using the same brokerage account they use for stocks or index funds.

That leap in accessibility is precedent-setting. Several Ethereum-staking ETFs are queued behind this one, and Solana’s approval now offers them a roadmap. Though let's be clear, Ethereum’s staking mechanics (like slashing and its longer unbonding period) will add complexity.

I think we can now also say that, at least under the present administration, the SEC was never trying to block staking outright. It just needed the right wrapper; one that could handle yield, taxes, custody, and compliance in a way that TradFi understands.

And while REX and Osprey aren’t quite household names in the way that BlackRock is, they now hold the first-mover advantage in what could become a multibillion-dollar ETF category.

The timing also coincides with a rise in staking momentum, with Jito, the Solana-based liquid staking and MEV protocol, up 5.7% today. Meanwhile, Robinhood just launched its own in-app SOL staking, offering retail investors a direct alternative.

— Jeff

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Happy REV report Monday:

Solana extended its REV lead streak to 14 weeks. It also extended its streak of weeks with declining REV to six weeks. 

The network’s $12.3 million of fees and tips last week was down roughly 70% from a mid-May high — but still tops among layer-1s.

— Jack

XStocks, a tokenized equity product from Backed, went live today.

Interestingly, while the product was initially announced as a partnership with Kraken, the Solana-based stocks are also available on Bybit, Phantom, Raydium, Jupiter, and Kamino, according to Backed’s website.

“Kraken was our first strategic partner and an anchor launch venue, but the broader rollout was always intended to include additional exchanges and onchain integrations like Bybit, and others to follow soon,” Backed co-founder Yehonatan Goldman said in a text.

The inclusion of DeFi protocols in the tokenized equities rollout is a boon to Solana’s overall vision of internet capital markets. Users can now trade memecoins and stocks while participating in DeFi all from the same self-custodial wallet. 

There’s also some tokenized equity DeFi stuff going on: The NVIDIA-USDC pool on Raydium has over $600,000 in liquidity. 

There are now over 100 holders of onchain NVDA, to use that example. Much of the actual activity involving the token is taking place on Jupiter and Raydium, according to Solscan data.

— Jack

A message from Yehonatan Goldman, co-founder of Backed: