Canada-listed SOL Strategies will be the first to list its shares through the new platform.
Superstate, the New York-based blockchain company helmed by Robert Leshner, is rolling out Opening Bell, a platform that will let companies issue and trade SEC-registered public shares directly on blockchains. Leshner is best known for founding Compound, a pioneering decentralized lending protocol, and as a partner at Robot Ventures, an early-stage investor in crypto startups such as EigenLayer, Lido Finance and Flashbots.
Until now, Superstate’s turf was tokenized funds. Its flagship vehicle, USTB, backed by short-term Treasurys, yields about 4.1% and manages $651 million in assets. The newer USCC fund, which wrings returns from cash-and-carry trades across bitcoin, ether and Treasurys, manages $100 million and offers a 6% yield. Both are Ethereum-based and off-limits to retail investors. With Opening Bell, Superstate is opening the doors to support equities on the Solana blockchain and retail investors as well as institutions.
“Our ultimate goal is not to be an asset manager,” says Leshner. “We see public equity as the next major chapter of tokenization and our focus from here on out.”
The pitch is programmable stock integrated into decentralized finance (DeFi) and tradable around the clock. Investors, after a standard identity check (KYC) either through Superstate or a partner wallet, will land on an approved list and will be able to buy or sell shares via their favorite decentralized exchange. Shares will settle instantly and show up in your wallet like any other crypto asset. The fee structure has not been disclosed.
The first to sign up is SOL Strategies, a Canadian firm focused on building infrastructure for Solana. Pending regulatory approval, its shares will be tradable on Solana this summer. SOL Strategies had previously announced plans to list on Nasdaq, but sees this launch as another crucial next step. “We believe that the future is Internet capital markets, and we want to be there first,” says President and CEO Leah Wald, who previously cofounded Valkyrie, a crypto ETF issuer acquired by CoinShares last year. Details of the offering, including the number of shares to be issued on the blockchain, have not yet been finalized.
Why Solana? Leshner points to its speed and resilience, proven by handling billions in memecoin trades and says it’s ready for a major test by another asset class, but the plan for Opening Bell is to expand to other blockchains as well.
He is betting on a new, crypto-first generation of investors. “It’s a massive wave of capital that doesn’t care about brokerage accounts, that does care about blockchain wallets, that wants to be able to trade in the ways that they’re used to. I really think of this as an entirely new capital market ready for companies to tap into,” says Leshner.
That demand isn’t limited to retail: many hedge funds, venture firms and wealthy investors are already hooked on crypto-native channels, he argues, pointing to Superstate’s 150 institutional clients, including Arrington Capital, BitGo, CoinFund, Flowdesk and ParaFi.
Wald adds that for global investors, blockchain-native equities could lower the barriers to U.S. stocks and other markets that traditional brokers make hard to reach. “It really allows many individuals to access these opportunities in a digital way that provides 24/7 trading and everything that we love about crypto,” she says.
Of course, this isn’t the first time someone’s tried to put securities on a blockchain. Remember tZERO, a platform backed by Overstock, which pioneered the concept ten years ago? Or tokenized shares of companies like Tesla and Apple Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX used to offer?
The key difference now is that Superstate is aiming for a securities regulator-approved framework, not just synthetic tokens or offshore workarounds. Last week, it submitted a proposal to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, dubbed Project Open, to enable the issuance and trading of equity securities on public blockchain networks like Solana.
In Leshner’s view, this is the necessary beginning of Internet capital markets. “Even if Nasdaq upgrades, it might take years for it to get to parity with blockchains, which continue to evolve more quickly and offer natural demand for issuers like SOL Strategies.”
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