Solana Expands Institutional Outreach With New Lightspeed IR Platform

• Solana has launched Lightspeed, a new investor relations platform to access protocol tokens with at least $100 million in market cap.
• The tool will offer on-chain data, in-depth research and sector breakdowns, broken down to match what institutions have been used to in legacy finance.

In December last year, Solana announced that it was developing a new investor relations platform with Blockworks, targeting institutional capital and offering a one-stop solution for all their on-chain data needs. The tool, known as Lightspeed, has now launched.

Announcing the launch, Solana described Lightspeed as “crypto’s first investor relations platform for professional allocators.” Access is limited to professional investors.

Lightspeed will contain all the vital information for any token on the Solana ecosystem with at least $100 million in market cap, enabling these projects to ‘tell their story’ to an audience whose tools are built for traditional finance.

On Solana, these include pump.fun’s PUMP, which powers the largest launchpad on the network and has a $769 million market cap. Others include the network’s largest memecoin, TRUMP, with an $806 million market cap, largest decentralized marketplace Jupiter, whose JUP token is valued at $532 million, and PancakeSwap’s CAKE at $433 million. Memecoins BONK, Pippin and Pudgy Penguins also have sizable market caps above $400 million.

Lightspeed users will access onchain data and investment committee-ready research with detailed sector breakdowns, and quarterly reports, all in one platform. The network will also curate exclusive events for Lightspeed members to interact with the top projects.

Solana says:

 Solana Targets Institutional Investors

Lightspeed is the latest initiative in the blockchain sector targeting institutional investors, who have become vital to the sector’s growth. While crypto was initially a preserve of retail users, it has evolved over time, and today, Wall Street giants like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, Citi, JPMorgan and Fidelity have become household names in the crypto world, as we have reported.

According to Silicon Valley Bank (which collapsed in 2023 but has since been reacquired by First Bank and now holds $108 billion in assets), 2026 is the year of crypto going to Wall Street. As this adoption rises, “driving larger venture capital checks, we expect continued capital concentration in fewer companies with investors prioritizing higher-quality projects and follow-ons into proven teams,” the bank told one outlet.

Institutional investors have proven they prefer structured products that mirror the ones they have been using for decades. Crypto ETFs are one of the best examples; hundreds of investment firms which had stayed away from the chaos of direct crypto investment now hold these ETFs. SEC filings have revealed that nearly three-quarters of BlackRock’s $61 billion iBIT Bitcoin ETF is held by market makers and hedge funds.

SOL trades at $83.7, dipping 1.6% in the past day for a $47.4 billion market cap.