Nasdaq Firm Targets $500M SOL Reserve As Corporate Crypto Treasuries Boom

Corporate cryptocurrency treasuries continued their growth trajectory this week, as publicly listed US companies continued announcing plans to raise hundreds of millions for altcoin treasury reserves.

On Monday, Nasdaq-listed Helius Medical Technologies announced the launch of a $500 million corporate treasury initiative built around the Solana token (SOL), signaling more corporate crypto adoption.

A day later, Standard Chartered’s venture arm, SC Ventures, announced plans to raise $250 million in capital for a digital asset investment fund, set to launch in 2026 and backed by Middle East investors with a focus on global investment opportunities.

On the regulatory front, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued new generic listing standards meant to speed up reviews for spot crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on exchanges including the Nasdaq, NYSE Arca and Cboe BZX. 

The SEC approved the new standards along with Grayscale’s Digital Large Cap Fund (GLDC), which marks the approval of the first multi-asset crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) in the US.

Nasdaq-listed Helius announces $500 million funding for Solana treasury

Nasdaq-listed Helius Medical Technologies is launching a $500 million corporate treasury reserve built around Solana, making it one of the largest Solana-focused treasury initiatives to date.

The company announced Monday that it priced an oversubscribed private investment in public equity (PIPE) offering of common stock at $6.88 per share, along with stapled warrants exercisable at $10.12 for three years. The deal includes $500 million in equity and up to $750 million in warrants, assuming full exercise.

Helius said it will use the net proceeds of the offering to establish a crypto treasury strategy with the Solana (SOL) token as its main reserve asset. The company said it will “significantly scale holdings over the next 12-24 months via best-in-class capital markets program incorporating ATM sales and other proven strategies.”

Helius will also explore staking and lending opportunities within the Solana ecosystem to generate additional revenue from the SOL treasury, while maintaining a “conservative” risk profile, it said.

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Standard Chartered venture arm to raise $250 million for digital asset fund: Report

Standard Chartered’s venture arm is preparing to launch a $250 million digital asset investment fund in 2026, signaling growing institutional appetite for digital assets.

Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures plans to raise the capital to open the investment fund focused on digital assets in the financial services sector, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing operating partner Gautam Jain.

Set to launch in 2026, the fund will be backed by Middle East investors, with a focus on global investment opportunities, Jain told Bloomberg.

SC Ventures’ plan follows a wave of corporate treasury firms building long-term accumulation strategies, adding to expectations that more institutional inflows may enter the crypto market over the next several years.

“Digital assets continue to be a high conviction theme for SC Ventures, evidenced through its digital asset-native ventures: Libeara, Zodia Markets, Zodia Custody and our existing digital asset investments,” a representative from SC Ventures told Cointelegraph, adding:

“We are continually evaluating opportunities in the digital asset space, whether it is through investments made directly or through JVs.”

In addition to digital asset opportunities, the firm is also “evaluating opportunities in dynamic regions, like the Middle East and Africa,” the representative added.

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Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade moves to December, blobs to double after

Ethereum’s core developers have selected early December for the tentative launch of the network’s next major hard fork, dubbed Fusaka, which aims to scale the network and make it more efficient.

While the Fusaka upgrade will go live on Dec. 3, the increase in blob capacity will take place two weeks after, putting it around Dec. 17, followed by another blob capacity hard fork on Jan. 7, 2026.

Both the blob capacity hard forks will more than double the current blob capacity, according to Ethereum researcher Christine D. Kim.

Before the upgrade goes live on the Ethereum mainnet, three public testnets will be conducted between early October and mid-November.

“The initial conclusion is that we can go ahead with a Max blob count of 15 for BPO1 [Blob Parameter Only] and Max blob count of 21 for BPO2. There are a total of 5 BPOs planned for Fusaka, so we can ensure mainnet scales a lot – safely,” Ethereum developer community ethPandaOps said in an X post on Thursday.

BPO (Blob-Parameter only) forks only change the parameters pertaining to blob targets and limits. These hard forks do not require any updates from the client side.

Blobs store large data sets offchain, which makes layer-2 networks more efficient while decreasing the cost of transactions.

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Curve Finance community to vote on $60 million proposal to make CRV a yield-bearing asset

The Curve Finance decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is voting on a proposal that could open up new income streams for the protocol and its ecosystem.

The proposal, introduced in August by founder Michael Egorov, would establish a $60 million credit line of crvUSD for Yield Basis. Voting began on Wednesday, with 97% of votes cast in support of the proposal at the time of writing.

Under the Yield Basis, holders of CRV who stake their tokens would receive veCRV (vote-escrowed CRV) in return, essentially creating income for stakers. Yield Basis would return between 35% and 65% of its value to holders of veCRV, while an additional 25% would be reserved for the ecosystem.

Egorov said the credit line would be enough to create pools for three assets: WBTC (WBTC), cbBTC (cbBTC) and tBTC (tBTC).

“In order to get more incentives for Curve ecosystem as well as to pay a fee for having Curve technology (cryptopools) powering its core, Yield Basis makes an allocation equal to 25% of YB which Yield Basis liquidity providers are getting to Curve,” Egorov wrote in the proposal.

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40% of Americans would use DeFi with laws in place: Crypto lobby poll

More than 40% of Americans are open to using decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols if proposed legislation is made law, according to a recent survey. 

Crypto lobby group the DeFi Education Fund (DEF) found in a survey released on Thursday that many Americans “are curious about DeFi” as respondents signalled a low trust in the traditional finance system.

The survey was conducted by Ipsos between Aug. 18 and 21, with 1,321 US adults polled. Ipsos Public Affairs vice president Alec Tyson said the study found “emerging awareness of cryptocurrency and decentralized finance as many Americans express frustrations with current financial institutions’ ability to deliver security, personalized control and flexibility.”

40% of Americans open to DeFi 

The poll showed that 42% said they would likely try DeFi if proposed legislation were passed into law, split between 9% who said they were “extremely or very likely” and 33% who responded they were “somewhat likely” to try.

Congress is currently looking at bills that would define the legal status of many cryptocurrencies and specify how the country’s financial regulators divvy up policing the sector.

Two in five, or 40%, of the respondents said they’d “likely try out DeFi,” with 84% of those respondents saying they’d use it to make purchases online. 

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DeFi market overview

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.

The Aster (ASTER) token rose over 600% as the week’s biggest gainer in the top 100, followed by the Immutable (IMX) token, up over 50% during the past week.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.