Howdy!

Happy GENIUS Act Friday. A-bosh!

Today, we have the exclusive on Sanctum’s first acquisition, Solana’s stablecoin supply, and an ICYMI from this week in Solana:

Sanctum acquires Ironforge, plots transaction infrastructure vertical

The Solana liquid staking startup Sanctum has acquired Ironforge in an all-cash deal, Lightspeed has learned exclusively.

Sanctum did not disclose the deal terms. Ironforge’s team, founded by Italo Casas, will join Sanctum, according to a blog post.

Ironforge builds Solana infrastructure, including for landing transactions on the network. With the acquisition, Sanctum plans to add transaction infrastructure as a business vertical.

Sanctum emerged in mid-2024 as a buzzy new Solana startup after going through Solana’s startup incubator. Until now, the project has focused on liquid staking tokens, which are tokenized representations of staked SOL. Its flagship product is INF, a liquid staking token that holds a basket of Solana LSTs. 

After a much talked about points program gave way to a somewhat-controversial airdrop, Sanctum has added a couple new business lines. One was creator coins, LSTs which share rewards with creators. Another was what are essentially white-label LSTs, starting with Binance, Bitget and Bybit. 

It was while working with these partners that Sanctum realized how difficult it can be to land transactions on Solana. The onchain pain became particularly acute during Donald Trump’s memecoin launch, which left Solana very congested. 

“Solving that problem meant either building a solution from scratch ourselves or teaming up with the best developers already working in that niche,” Sanctum said in a blog post, adding: “Ironforge was that team.”

And so, Sanctum has struck out on a non-LST business vertical for the first time.

“[There are] a profusion of transaction landing solutions on Solana and no good way to observe and adjudicate their performance. [We] aggregate and make observability a first class citizen giving developers full control and observability,” Sanctum co-founder FP Lee said.

Ironforge did not immediately return a request for comment.

— Jack Kubinec

P.S. Fill out our short audience survey and help us build a better Lightspeed. Thank you!

In crypto, hype fades but sustainable ecosystems win. Learn how top protocols are building for the long haul.

Join Blockworks Research, MegaETH, Flipside Crypto and Avalanche for this upcoming Roundtable.

📅 July 31 | 12 PM EST

Checking in on that stablecoin supply:

Interestingly, after setting a new peak in early May, Solana stables have noticeably dipped in recent months. 

I have heard it speculated that this could be due to US dollar weakness. Don’t lose heart, however: Solana has added some $700 million in stablecoin supply this month.

— Jack Kubinec

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

• DAWN has launched a decentralized hardware miner called Black Box. It comes preloaded with Helium integration and hopes to transform homes and venues into earn-to-share WiFi zones across the US and Mexico. The device will plug users directly into Helium’s people-powered network using Passpoint, expanding coverage where legacy ISPs fall short.

• Slash, a USDC-based payments app, now supports Solana on- and off-ramps, letting users convert stable assets to USD without using an exchange account. It’s aimed at making stablecoin payments easier for contractors and customers, with funds automatically settling in dollars.

• Jarret Dunn, the rogue developer who attempted to sabotage Pump.fun back in May 2024, appears to be behind bars in London after violating bail conditions tied to his $2 million exploit of the memecoin launchpad. Known online as @STACCoverflow, Dunn had pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering before trying to walk it back. Now held in HMP Pentonville, he’s been posting eccentric jailhouse dispatches through a friend, claiming the food is good and the game isn’t over.

• Swig and Para have teamed up to make Solana onboarding feel invisible. They're combining social logins and embedded wallets, plus gasless transactions with no need for SOL or seed phrases. Users can sign in with Google or FaceID and start using apps instantly, while developers get session keys, gasless transactions and a smoother way to build consumer-friendly crypto experiences.

• Perena has created USD’, a US Treasury-backed stablecoin on Solana designed for GENIUS Act compliance and institutional use. Issued by Brale and backed by tokenized funds from Franklin Templeton and Superstate, USD’ offers 1:1 USDC swaps, confidential transfers and seamless integration with banking rails.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Andrew Cronk, co-founder of Figment: