Mentioned in This Article
1. Solana Tokenized Stocks Get a Venue Under the SEC Framework
Formation Securities has told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to operate a venue for tokenized stocks on Solana (SOL), with trading expected to start in early 2027. Announced on November 9, 2026, the plan would make Formation the first Solana-based operator under the regulator's innovation exemption, and three listed companies have already signaled support.
The first names on the roster are Galaxy Digital (GLXY), Exodus Movement (EXOD) and Forward Industries (FWDI). Each is a publicly traded company with an existing relationship to tokenization, which helps explain why they were willing to step forward before the platform has processed a single trade.
Formation describes the project as a tokenized securities venue, or TSV, the category of platform that the SEC framework was designed to admit. The filing matters less for its size, which is still modest, than for what it says about how quickly the experiment is attracting rival operators, each with a different technical and commercial approach.
2. What Is the SEC's Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Stocks?
The innovation exemption is a five-year regulatory framework that lets qualifying venues test the trading of tokenized U.S. equities. It works as a supervised sandbox: operators may run live markets, but only within limits set by the regulator, and the experience gathered during the period is meant to inform how blockchain-based securities trading is treated in the longer term.
Under the framework, venues may use automated market makers, known as AMMs. Instead of matching buyers and sellers through an order book, an AMM lets traders swap against a pool of assets, with prices set by a formula that responds to the pool's balance. The model is familiar from decentralized finance, and applying it to regulated shares is one of the central tests of the exemption.
Access is deliberately narrow. Participation is limited to verified investors, and the rules cap both the volume that can be traded and the number of securities a venue may offer. Those guardrails mean the first venues will operate at a small scale, but they also give regulators a contained environment in which to watch how pricing, settlement and investor protection behave.
The tokens traded on these venues are also required to carry the same shareholder rights as conventional shares, including voting and dividends. That requirement separates them from many tokenized products that already circulate, which mimic a share price without conferring any claim on the company.
3. Who Else Is Building a Venue?
Formation is the fourth firm to announce a venue under the framework. It follows OKXICE, a joint venture between Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, and the crypto exchange OKX. TSV LLC, which is based on the Canton network, and Perpetuals.com have also announced plans.
The line-up shows a mix of established market infrastructure and crypto-native entrants. OKXICE pairs a traditional exchange operator with a digital-asset trading platform, while Formation arrives from the Solana ecosystem, where it grew out of the merger of the Orca and Loopscale projects. Each applicant is betting on a different chain, a different set of partners and a different route to convincing issuers to take part.
For investors and issuers, the practical consequence is competition before the first trade has taken place. Several venues will be chasing the same pool of listed companies, and the terms they offer, along with the willingness of those companies to cooperate, are likely to decide which platforms gain traction.
4. Why Solana Is a Natural Home for Tokenized Equities
Solana already holds a meaningful share of the stock-token market. According to RWA.xyz data, it ranks third by the value of tokenized stocks, behind Ethereum and BNB Chain, with roughly $570 million of a market worth about $3.8 billion.
It is also the busiest network for trading these assets. More than $7 billion changed hands on Solana over the past week, a figure that reflects the chain's low transaction costs and fast confirmation times, which suit frequent trading.
That headline number needs context. A large portion of the activity involves synthetic stock tokens, which are derivatives that follow the price of a share without delivering ownership or shareholder rights. Holders of such tokens have exposure to price movements but no claim on the company itself. The tokens planned for Formation's venue are meant to be different, because the SEC framework requires genuine shareholder rights.
The distinction is important for anyone comparing the size of the existing market with what the regulated version may eventually become. Volume in synthetic products shows demand for round-the-clock access to U.S. shares, yet it does not prove that regulated, rights-bearing tokens will draw the same flows.
5. How Will Issuers Respond? Lessons From OKXICE
Issuers hold real power in this system. Under the SEC's rules, a company has 30 days to block trading of its shares when an unaffiliated third party tokenizes them. A venue that lists a company without its blessing can therefore see the listing withdrawn.
OKXICE was the first to run into that rule in the past month and met strong resistance. According to a tally as of Friday, about 90% of the 62 companies it had initially selected objected. Apple, Microsoft and Meta were among the companies rejecting the plans.
Formation has taken the opposite route. It secured the support of its first three issuers before announcing the venue, an approach described by Christopher Montagano, the firm's president. Starting with willing participants reduces the risk of a public rebuff and gives the venue a credible set of listings at launch.
The three companies are not newcomers to the field. Galaxy and Forward Industries shares are already available on Superstate's Opening Bell platform, and Exodus was among the first companies to issue tokenized shares, through Securitize. Their prior experience lowers the barrier to joining a new venue.
Alex Thorn, Galaxy's head of firmwide research, said onchain equities are still at an early stage, but that the SEC exemption offers a regulated path toward a meaningful segment of U.S. capital markets.
6. How Would Trading Work on Formation's Venue?
Investors would be able to hold the tokens in their own digital wallets and trade at any hour using stablecoins. Transactions settle instantly onchain, in contrast to the settlement cycle that follows a trade in conventional equity markets, and the venue would not be tied to the opening hours of a traditional exchange.
Formation plans to license trading technology from Orca, a decentralized exchange protocol on Solana. Montagano previously served as Orca's chief legal officer, which links the new venue to a protocol with an established track record in onchain trading.
The firm also wants an open structure. Montagano said Formation intends to host competing tokenization providers on the same platform, and he rejected the idea that the venue is picking winners, pointing to its use of several providers for tokenization, custody and trading rather than reliance on one company.
Superstate and Securitize are expected to offer shares there. Custody providers Anchorage Digital, BitGo and Fireblocks will help investors reach the venue, and other distribution partners named in the company's press release include Alpaca, CoinList, Solflare, Squads and the JTX trading interface from Jito.
7. What Happens Next for Formation Securities?
Formation plans to expand its list of companies over the next two months by contacting public firms directly. It presents the venue as an additional distribution channel that could bring in investors who do not use traditional exchanges, rather than as a replacement for them.
Trading is expected to begin in early 2027. Before then, the firm must show that its three initial issuers remain on board and win over further companies, a task made harder by the objections OKXICE encountered from some of the largest U.S. technology groups.
Montagano set a clear benchmark for success: he wants the venue to compete with Nasdaq on spreads and efficiency. The broader aim is to demonstrate that blockchain-based trading can match established exchanges on cost, which would strengthen the argument for moving more equity activity onchain.
Whether that happens will depend on liquidity, on regulatory comfort with automated market makers for stocks, and on how many issuers choose to take part. For now, the filing marks Solana's entry into a regulated contest that is only beginning.
8. What the Filing Means for the Wider Tokenization Push
Tokenization is the practice of representing ownership of a traditional asset, such as a share, as a token on a blockchain. Supporters argue that it can shorten settlement times, allow trading outside standard hours and make assets easier to move between wallets and platforms. Skeptics point to liquidity, custody and legal questions that have to be settled before the model can handle large volumes.
The innovation exemption addresses several of those concerns at once by placing experiments under regulatory supervision. By limiting participants, volumes and the number of securities, it allows the SEC to watch real markets operate without exposing the broader financial system to untested technology. Each new venue adds data to that effort, and the variety of designs, from exchange-operator joint ventures to Solana-native AMM platforms, widens what the regulator can learn.
For Solana, the filing offers a chance to shift part of its stock-token activity from synthetic instruments toward products that carry genuine shareholder rights. Whether users migrate will depend on pricing and liquidity, but the presence of recognizable issuers and established custody names gives the venue a degree of credibility that purely synthetic products lack.
Issuer consent remains the decisive variable. The reaction to OKXICE showed that many large companies are wary of having their shares tokenized by outside parties, while the three companies behind Formation show that willing issuers exist. How the balance between those two groups develops over the coming months is likely to shape the experiment.