According to a new report from Messari, Solana (SOL) continued to attract institutional finance and payment companies in the first quarter even as the overall cryptocurrency market slumped.
The research firm said on Monday that growth in BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL and new integrations related to payments and tokenized finance pushed Solana’s real-world market capitalization up 43% quarter over quarter to $2.01 billion.
BUIDL, developed by BlackRock and Securitize, grew to $525.4 million on Solana after Anchorage Digital added custodial support to the fund. Messari said Anchorage held about 81% of the network’s asset supply at the end of the quarter.
The report frames Solana as becoming more than just a hub for speculative crypto trading, but an infrastructure for tokenized finance.
Several traditional financial companies expanded their Solana-related activities during the quarter. Ondo Finance has launched over 200 tokenized stocks and ETFs on the network through Ondo Global Markets, and Franklin Templeton has partnered with Ondo to bring tokenized ETF products on-chain. Citigroup also completed a tokenized trade finance proof of concept with PwC and Solana.
Payments also emerged as a major theme.
Messari said companies such as Visa, Stripe, Worldpay, Western Union and PayPal have either integrated Solana for stablecoin payments or launched Solana-native payment products in the past year. The report notes that Solana’s low fees and near-instant settlement times make it increasingly attractive as a payments infrastructure.
The stablecoin market capitalization on Solana ended the first quarter at $14.85 billion, ranking the network third among blockchains. Adjusted stablecoin transfer volume increased 13% sequentially to $246.8 billion.
Despite the decline in cryptocurrency prices, Solana’s on-chain activity remained resilient. Solana’s total application revenue, which Messari refers to as “chain GDP,” was essentially flat during the quarter at $342.2 million.
Still, Messari argued that the nature of activity on Solana Island is changing. The report noted the increasing adoption of high-speed trading infrastructure, known as “prop AMM,” which is beginning to outperform centralized exchanges in terms of execution quality and trading costs.
Messerli also said Solana’s upcoming Alpenglow upgrade is one of the network’s most important technology developments. This upgrade is expected to reduce transaction finality time from approximately 12.8 seconds to approximately 150 milliseconds. The company said these performance improvements could strengthen Solana’s position in payments, tokenized finance, and AI-driven applications.
