On April 30, 2026, the Solana ecosystem formalized its expansion into the European financial market with the creation of the Solana Research Institute (SRI), a Swiss-based entity designed to facilitate the technical and regulatory integration of banking institutions into its public network.
The initiative, led by former Euroclear executive Angus Scott, emerges during a period of increasing regulatory scrutiny following the full implementation of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) in the European Union and the discussion of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act in the United States.
The launch of the SRI includes the publication of a technical guide of approximately 60 pages aimed at senior financial practitioners. This document addresses critical aspects of market structure, operational risk management, and the viability of Solana’s architecture for use in regulated markets. The project features direct collaboration from the Solana Foundation and infrastructure providers such as Jito, R3, and Figment. This research structure complements efforts initiated in 2025 with the launch of the Solana Policy Institute in Washington, although, unlike the US office focused on policy advocacy, the Swiss SRI has a strictly technical and operational mandate for private sector entities.
The decision to establish a research arm in Switzerland responds to activity data recorded by the network in early 2026. According to the State of Solana report for February 2026, the protocol recorded a stablecoin transfer volume of $650 billion in a single month. Additionally, the network reported that more than $2 billion in real-world assets (RWA) were tokenized on its infrastructure during March 2026.
This growth in transactional volume has been reinforced by previous integrations. In late 2025, the ecosystem had already taken significant steps toward professionalizing its building environment through the integration of global Mastercard into its developer platform, which added 20 service providers to optimize the creation of decentralized financial applications. However, despite these metrics, Solana faces sharp competition from the liquidity of established networks and the privacy of permissioned rails.
Institutional competition and permissioned networks
The SRI debuts in a market where Ethereum maintains a dominant position in terms of total liquidity. Network data indicates that Ethereum holds more than $165 billion in stablecoins, significantly exceeding Solana’s value storage capacity. In terms of total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance, the difference is notable: approximately $44 billion on Ethereum compared to just over $5 billion on Solana.
On the other hand, the traditional banking sector continues to show a strong inclination toward permissioned infrastructure solutions for reasons of privacy and compliance. Data from the Canton Foundation indicates that applications on the Canton Network already manage more than $6 trillion in tokenized assets, including large repurchase agreements (repos) and securities positions. This environment highlights the SRI’s challenge in convincing institutions to migrate part of their operations to a public network that, while fast and inexpensive, requires new guarantees regarding transaction privacy and regulatory compliance.
Execution requirements and operational risks
Jito’s participation in the SRI underscores one of the banks’ primary concerns: execution quality. According to Nick Almond, head of governance at Jito Foundation, institutions have moved from questioning the technology’s viability to demanding details on transaction determinism and best execution guarantees. The ecosystem’s current infrastructure is under review to close gaps in areas such as:
Pre-trade privacy: Avoiding the exposure of trading strategies before block validation.
Venue connectivity: Direct integration with traditional reporting and custody systems.
Custody maturity: Developing interfaces that meet the risk standards of entities such as State Street or the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).
The Solana Research Institute plans to hold closed-door working sessions in key financial hubs like London to address these points. The goal is to transform isolated experimentation into real operational deployments under European banking supervision standards.
This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice.
