Why are companies stockpiling SOL?

Written by: Token Dispatch, Prathik Desai  Translated by: Block unicorn

Foreword

The Solana treasury movement has gone from a trickle to a torrent.

About four months ago, we reported that Sol Strategies was busy building a Solana money management company. Now, the competition has become more intense and, quite memey.

In the record of "unexpected things", the case of a public company partnering with a memecoin to operate blockchain infrastructure is quite eye-catching. However, less than two weeks ago, another Solana money management company, DeFi Development Corp (DFDV), partnered with the Solana memecoin Bonk.

They’re not kidding.

A few days ago, DFDV announced that it would allocate a portion of its SOL holdings into Liquid Staking Tokens (LST), which can be used in DeFi applications or for transfers while earning yield and staking rewards.

Corporate treasury management has gone completely crypto-native. From companies buying Bitcoin, to operating validator nodes, working with memecoin, and now companies pioneering liquid staking strategies.

In this post, we’ll dive into what it means to own Solana at a time when most other companies, including those with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, are piling into Bitcoin.

The Craze

DeFi Development Corporation (a real estate company that changed its name to Janover in April 2025) made its largest Solana purchase on May 12, adding 172,670 SOL to its treasury. This brought its total holdings to 609,233 SOL, worth more than $100 million.

That’s a third of the company’s total market value.

The stock market has reacted enthusiastically.

Since the name change, DFDV’s stock has surged 30-fold in the past two months. This is largely due to its shift in focus to investing in Solana.

Image source: @TradingView

Not to be outdone, Canadian company Sol Strategies filed a preliminary prospectus with local securities regulators to raise up to $1 billion to further invest in the Solana ecosystem.

New players continue to join.

Classover Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed education technology company, has planned a Solana-centric strategy and has received $400 million in financing; while DIGITALX has increased its holdings of SOL to accelerate staking returns.

Why all the fuss? There are a number of reasons.

Does the SOL Treasury really make sense?

The Yield Game

The Solana Treasury is different from Bitcoin strategies in that they actually generate a yield.

DIGITALX highlights its annual staking yield of 7-9%, which is expected to bring in an additional AUD$800,000 per year in revenue. Compare that to Bitcoin’s 0% yield, and you start to see the appeal.

These companies aren’t content with simple staking. They’re going all-in on building infrastructure. DeFi Development’s liquidity staking initiative represents the next stage of evolution: earning yield while maintaining liquidity, really having the best of both worlds.

With this move, the company becomes the first publicly traded company to hold Solana’s liquidity staking tokens.

The partnership with BONK? This will allow both parties to jointly grow delegated stake, the amount of Solana tokens committed to their validator nodes, and share rewards in the process. It’s a combination of community engagement and fund management.

“DFDV and BONK are each leaders in their fields. By working together, we can benefit from each other’s unique positioning and brand awareness,” Parker White, CIO and COO of DeFi Development, told Decrypt.

Validators and Governance Roles

These companies are not just buying and holding SOL — they are becoming providers of infrastructure.

On May 5, DeFi Development Corp announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Solana validator business, which has an average delegated stake of approximately 500,000 SOL ($75.5 million).

This creates a "flywheel" effect for the company: reinvesting earnings to accumulate more SOL, further expanding the capacity of validators. This is in stark contrast to Michael Saylor's Strategy.

By operating a validator node, companies can:

• Influence network governance

• Build relationships with projects

• Potentially incubate or invest in startups built on Solana

• Creating additional revenue streams beyond treasury growth

A story of speed and scale

Solana’s transactions are processed faster and with far lower transaction fees than competing blockchains like Ethereum. For companies that are looking beyond just value for money, this opens up possibilities that Bitcoin can’t match.

Unlike Bitcoin, which is primarily used to transfer value across networks, Solana can support decentralized financial applications as well as consumer applications, games, and more.

Different ways to play

Each company’s strategy in this game is different:

DeFi Development Corp is a radical innovator.

In addition to accumulating 609,233 SOL, they are also pioneering liquidity staking and memecoin partnerships. Joseph Onorati, CEO of DeFi Development Corp, told Decrypt: "Solana’s purchase volume exceeding $100 million is a major milestone—but it’s just the beginning."

SOL Strategies takes an institutional approach and focuses on becoming a top staking platform with a mature fund management strategy. Their $1 billion prospectus suggests their ambitions go far beyond simply adding shares.

DIGITALX, for its part, presents a yield-optimization strategy, meticulously calculating staking returns and highlighting its income potential to shareholders. They see SOL as a dividend stock.

Risk Profile

However, it’s not that simple. Let’s get a little realistic and sober.

First, the macro trap: These strategies feed on cheap capital. Most SOL buyers raise money through convertible bonds or equity financing vehicles. When liquidity dries up—and it always does—it’s all over.

Second, the regulatory time bomb: Marco Santori says the company’s SOL money management strategy allows it to operate in ways that “simple, passive” funds can’t. That’s fine until regulators decide your “fund management” looks like an unregistered investment fund.

Third, yield compression is coming. As more and more validators join, that enticing 7-9% yield will shrink. It’s common economics: an increased supply of validators means a reduced return for each validator.

The infrastructure burden is real, too. Running a validator node is not passive income — it’s an operational business with technical overhead, upgrade requirements, and the risk of slashing. Miss the update window? That’s money gone.

Dan Kang said on the Lightspeed podcast that DeFi Development Corp is trading with 700% volatility. That makes Bitcoin look like a stablecoin. Given Solana’s history of network failures, you’re betting on both price and reliability.

The maximum extractable value (MEV) game will ultimately favor the largest players, just like it did on Ethereum.

And then there’s the competition. As of May 21, the SEC has not approved any Solana spot ETFs, but if it does, these money managers will lose their unique selling advantage. Why buy DFDV when you can buy a Solana ETF? But the same goes for Strategy betting on Bitcoin, right?

Our View

The ongoing Solana money management phenomenon shows that it has moved beyond the passive balance sheet allocations of the past. They have transformed into active infrastructure investments that can generate real returns.

The innovation is in packaging complex DeFi operations into familiar corporate structures.

But let’s be clear: this is a high-wire act. These firms are simultaneously betting on Solana’s price, network stability, validator economics, and their own operational excellence. When it works, it’s wonderful — multiple revenue streams from a single asset. When it doesn’t, you’re left with a question to explain to shareholders why your treasury needs a DevOps team.

Companies that can efficiently scale validator operations while dealing with the coming yield compression will benefit the most from this game. Those that expect today’s high yields to continue tomorrow and beyond are making a mistake.

When Bitcoin’s 50% annual yield is compared to Solana’s near-zero yield over the past 12 months, it’s a reminder that yield isn’t everything. But for companies willing to accept operational complexity for additional returns, the Solana Treasury offers something Bitcoin never can: cash flow from day one.

This is Treasury 2.0 — a strategy that allows your balance sheet to run code, earn yield, and occasionally partner with a dog-themed cryptocurrency.