Summary Solana is poised for significant upside as two separate Digital Asset Treasury companies prepare billion dollar bids. SOL's current low public company ownership and high staking ratio could amplify price gains, even without immediate ETF inflows. Despite lagging stablecoin transfer volume and some network utility concerns, the high staking yield remains attractive for corporate treasuries. I expect SOL could revisit or surpass all-time highs this year, driven by incoming DAT demand rather than improved network fundamentals. With the proliferation of Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) and Ethereum ( ETH-USD ) treasury companies in recent months, one digital asset that has yet to see large capital flows from public companies is Solana ( SOL-USD ). To be sure, there are a few; perhaps most notably Upexi Inc ( UPXI ). But where Bitcoin has Strategy ( MSTR ) and Ethereum has Bitmine Immersion ( BMNR ), so far Solana has lacked a major horse with a multi-billion dollar bid. That may be changing. In this article, we'll go over why Solana appears to be the next major digital asset to be scooped up by Digital Asset Treasury companies, henceforth referred to as 'DATS.' Solana's Performance vs Peers Data by YCharts Year to date, Solana's performance has been lackluster with the coin producing a modest 2.8% gain. This has lagged both Bitcoin and Ethereum by a significant margin. Some of this is perhaps due to normalization following an absolutely stellar 2024 run for the token. But I suspect this year-to-date under-performance is also due to what is a relative lack of capital investment net flows for SOL compared with ETH or BTC: as of 8/23/25 (CoinShares/Bloomberg) At just $1.06 billion in net flow, Solana's 2025 investment demand has been less than half of Ethereum's in August alone. In fact, prior to the week of August 17th, Ethereum's first-half August demand was actually higher than Solana's entire AUM through traditional financial products. When I last wrote about Solana , I downgraded the coin and cited the end of the 'memecoin' cycle as my primary reason. Since that article was published, SOL has actually beaten BTC by over 20%: Data by YCharts Perhaps too pessimistic back in March, buying SOL at $125 earlier this year was indeed a good buy for anyone who had a larger willingness to play the crypto ponies. As far as I can tell, ETH's recent out-performance versus both BTC and SOL since the April lows has been entirely driven by the explosion in corporate holdings of the asset. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that we see SOL do the same. Solana Is About To Get the DAT Treatment SOL Holdings by DATs (The Block) As of August 27th, there are just 3.44 million SOL held by public companies. This is just 0.6% of the 570.7 million circulating SOL supply. Conversely, public companies hold 4.7% of Bitcoin's circulating supply and 3.6% of Ethereum's circulating supply. This appears poised to change with not one but two different groups gearing up for $1 billion bids to build SOL-based DATs. According to a report from Bloomberg , Galaxy Digital ( GLXY ), Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital are working with backers to build a $1 billion Solana DAT. Not to be outdone, Pantera Capital is eyeing a $1.25 billion Solana DAT per reporting from The Information. The Galaxy/Jump/Multicoin deal would apparently be finalized in early September. For insight into what bidders like this could do for SOL's price, we can look to the performance of ETH since the end of June to crudely model a theory: Publicly Held ETH June 30th August 27th % Change Through ETFs 4,228,695 6,705,904 58.6% Through DATs 1,200,380 4,359,435 263.2% Combined Total 5,429,075 11,065,339 103.8% ETH Price $2,486 $4,495 80.8% Source: StrategicETHReserve.xyz, Analyst's calculations While ETH had already bounced nicely from the April lows, the real fireworks didn't start until July. We can see in the table above that there was 4.2 million ETH held through ETFs on June 30th. ETH held through DATs was just 1.2 million at that time. In less than two months since, we've seen ETH held through ETFs increase by 58% and ETH held through DATs absolutely explode by 263%. Something else to consider is at 1.2 million coins, ETH held through DATs at the end of June was less than 1% of the coin's circulating supply. We have a similar dynamic present in SOL today. That said, it's important to remember there is currently no US-based spot Solana ETF available in the market and one probably shouldn't be expected until the next SEC deadline in mid-October. Ultimately, the lack of an ability from ETF buyers to bid with SOL's DAT purchasers figures to limit the upside from Pantera and Galaxy/Jump/Multicoin bidding the coin. But we should also consider that of the combined ETH held through DATs and ETFs, 56% of the coins were purchased by Digital Asset Treasury combines. Thus, if we assume 44% of ETH's 80% price gain over the last two months has been driven by ETFs with the remaining coming from DATs, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a 45-50% rise in SOL's price in response to the new DAT entrants. Top 10 Chains (StakingRewards) While there won't be competing bids from ETFs immediately, the staking ratio difference between ETH and SOL is quite telling. Solana has a staking ratio of 66.5% while Ethereum has a staking ratio of just 29.6%. Furthermore, ETH's staking ratio has actually increased since the end of June as many of the ETH DATs are actively staking their assets. The argument I'm making here is that any limited upside in SOL's price due to the lack of ETFs may be mitigated by the fact that most of the supply is 'locked up' in staking protocols. Thus, it seems implausible to me that two different companies could buy $2.25 billion combined worth of SOL in a short amount of time without drastically impacting the price of the asset. Network Metrics: Some Noticeable Risks One of the natural direct peers for Solana has been Base. Both are low-fee networks, both had seen explosive growth in daily active users, and both had seen large spikes in stablecoin transfer volume during 2024. While some of those things remain true today, Solana is now losing one of the big ones to Base - and other chains for that matter: Stablecoin Transfer Volume (Artemis) At $210 billion in July, Solana's stablecoin transfer volume has fallen well below that of Base - which did $1.3 trillion during the same month. This is in spite of Solana having nearly a 3:1 edge in stablecoin supply at roughly $12 billion: Stablecoin Supply (Artemis) But it isn't just the stable supply edge that Solana has that leads me to be disappointed by Solana's comparatively low share of stablecoin transfer volume; its that Solana is doing less stable transfers on considerably more DAAs and daily transactions. In July Solana had a 4.4 million average DAAs to Base's 1.4 million. In July, Solana did 3.5 billion transactions compared to 278 million on Base. To me, this is indicative of Solana still being primarily utilized for bot trading rather than the RWA-type investments that can be seen on a network like Ethereum. Closing Takeaways Despite a few concerns that I have about Solana's usage, I still think there's a fairly significant chance that SOL revisits all-time highs this year - potentially even making a new one. The amount of SOL currently owned by DATs is quite small relative to that of BTC and ETH. Furthermore, the staking yield from SOL is likely attractive enough to warrant corporate attention and the staking ratio is high. My view is the high staking ratio could make up for the lack of ETF buy pressure through mid-October. When I last covered Solana in March, I wanted to see a positive story in stablecoin transfer volume before I'd get more optimistic. I still don't see that story. So this upgrade isn't based on any network utility fundamental change. Rather, we expect the coin is about to get the DAT treatment. If it does half the rally ETH just did since the end of June, we could see SOL flirting with $300 per coin.
