Solana Treasury Firm Releases Liquid Staking Token to Grow Validator Business

Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corp. has released a liquid staking token in order to expand its SOL validator staking business.

It’s the latest news from the Nasdaq-listed company, which last month pushed its SOL holdings above $100 million.

DeFi Development Corp. is not the biggest SOL treasury company, however. On June 2, online education firm Classover announced that it had reached an agreement to raise an additional $500 million to expand its SOL treasury holdings. That’s on top of the $400 million it had already raised.

Nonetheless, DeFi Development Corp. has had a busy month, first acquiring a Solana validator and then announcing a validator partnership with leading Solana community memecoin, Bonk, which has a market capitalization of $1.35 billion, according to CoinGecko.

The jointly managed validator node will be operated by DeFi Development Corp., with Bonk providing marketing support.

“Owning and operating validators with significant delegated stake puts us at the core of Solana while furthering our mission of effectively accumulating SOL to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns relative to holding SOL directly,” Parker White, CIO and COO of DeFi Development Corp., said in a statement.

Diving into Liquid Staking

On June 2, DeFi Development Corp. released its new Sanctum-built liquid staking token (LST), dfdvSOL, and revealed that it would be integrated into Kamino, the Solana ecosystem’s largest lending protocol.

The LST is distributed to users who stake their SOL with DeFi Development Corp’s Solana validators, allowing them to earn staking yields while remaining liquid.

DeFi Development Corp said in a statement that the partnership will “set the stage for future collaboration on tokenized financial assets, including the potential for stock-backed tokens and other real-world asset (RWA) representations on Solana.”

Since becoming a Solana treasury business, DeFi Development Corp. — formerly known as Janover — has seen its stock price surge from the $0.50 to $2 range to its current $19.78, hitting a high of $34.25 on May 23.