JPMorgan, Visa Turn to Solana as Core Infrastructure for Internet Capital Markets

Tiger Research said Solana is emerging as a core infrastructure layer for the next generation of "internet capital markets," or ICM.

In a June 19 report titled "Internet Capital Market 2026: Structural Shifts in the US and Strategic Direction for Asian Institutions," the firm said the era of internet capital markets is taking shape, with asset issuance, trading and settlement occurring on a single public blockchain. It argued that today’s capital markets still operate on a structure designed before the internet, generating heavy costs from settlement delays and data reconciliation.

Settlement delays alone create about $32 billion a year in capital costs in the US Treasury market, the report said. Across the broader bond and fixed-income market, that annual cost exceeds $45 billion. In blockchain-based internet capital markets, by contrast, trade execution and settlement can be completed simultaneously within seconds through smart contracts.

Tiger Research identified Solana as the network where that shift is being implemented most concretely. Global financial institutions including JPMorgan, State Street, Citi, Franklin Templeton, Visa, PayPal and Western Union have pursued Solana-based asset issuance, payment settlement, tokenized product launches and pilot projects, it said.

The report also cited technical performance as a key strength. Solana processed 33 billion transactions last year, with an average fee of $0.0013 per transaction and transaction finality of about 0.4 seconds. The network also continued operating without interruption during sharp market declines and an AWS outage, according to the report.

Tiger Research pointed to "programmable compliance" as a major driver of institutional adoption. The report said Solana’s Token-2022 standard allows compliance functions including asset freezes, allowlist management and confidential balance management to be built directly into tokens. In May, Solana-based decentralized exchange Orca launched a permissioned marketplace for tokenized assets open only to investors who had passed KYC checks.

The report added that the Solana Policy Institute, or SPI, is also actively participating in regulatory design. It submitted "Project Open," a framework for issuing and trading equities on a public blockchain, to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s crypto task force.

"The validation is over, but the standards have not yet been fixed," Yoon Seung-sik, head of research at Tiger Research, said. "That gap is precisely the window of opportunity that latecomers can use. It is unclear how long that window will remain open, so they need to move quickly."