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The Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly asked prospective Solana ETF issuers to submit amended S-1 forms, raising questions about whether a Solana ETF could be approved this year. If so, it could have massive implications for the entire crypto market. In contrast, it took 10+ years for U.S. investors to be able to invest in a Bitcoin ETF, a decade of struggle that included a lawsuit, countless education initiatives and meetings with regulators resulting in one of the biggest ETF launches ever.
Ethereum showed up pretty soon after (but with no staking, more on that later). The SEC approved the listing of spot Ethereum ETFs in May 2024.
Now we may find ourselves on the very cusp of a Solana ETF being approved, which is incredibly important to the longterm acceptance and adoption of digital assets in America.
Bitcoin’s story was all about the underlying investment being a sort of digital gold.
Solana has a different story, and one that is critical for U.S. technical innovation. Solana is a blockchain that people actually use for more than savings and, due to its speed and efficiency for actually building applications. According to the blockchain data published via Dune Analytics, there were roughly 5.5 million Solana wallet accounts with daily activity in May 2025. Choosing to invest in Solana is, in many ways, like choosing to invest in a technology company. There are a myriad of quantitative data points that show the chain is being utilized and there are countless qualitative examples too.
Many of those transactions are processed by companies like the crypto exchange Gemini or the infrastructure and investment firm Sol Strategies, which earn revenue from staking assets and validating the chain, with the average daily gas (fee) revenue in April 2025 yielding around $1.2 million. Gate data estimates the total monthly fee revenue reached roughly $37.5 million.
Right now Solana users include a healthy mix of DeFi activity, NFTs, and, increasingly, real world assets being brought on chain. Moodys, Societe Generale, R3, Securitize, Franklin Templeton and BlackRock are all building and releasing products on Solana.
All of this is why the timing is right for a Solana ETF.
What makes the case for a Solana ETF a little more complicated is that, unlike Ethereum, where the staking reward hovers around 2%, the Solana staking reward of +8% cannot be ignored. Remember my mention of Ethereum staking earlier? When the Ethereum ETFs were finally approved last year (under the Biden administration), the SEC required issuers to strip out staking. With Solana’s high staking return it is imperative that the SEC not only approve a Solana spot ETF, but, in fairness to investors, an ETF that stakes.
Apart from the return dynamics, another important consideration is that Solana requires Solana in a proof-of-stake system to run the network. Right now, according to Blockworks, 6% of bitcoin is locked up in ETFs (which is incredible in and of itself). If that were to happen to Solana, and that SOL could not be staked, it could cause network issues as more and more SOL tokens became unavailable to the network.
The SEC recently released guidance on staking, which appears to support native staking (the best and safest way to an ETF to stake). This, along with a request for comment on S1 filings appears to indicate approval is imminent.
Approval will be a great way for a set of investors to access Solana in a new way-supporting the network-and allowing them to participate in the likely future growth of the network.
