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Alpenglow Goes Live, Samsung Picks Solana for USDC, and J.P. Morgan Funds Arrive: Solana Intelligence Report

Solana Intelligence Report October 2026: Alpenglow and 200ms slots go live, Samsung Wallet picks Solana for USDC, and J.P. Morgan funds and Securitize stocks arrive.

Generation Infinity
By Generation Infinity

Alpenglow replaced TowerBFT on October 21, twelve days after 200ms slots went live. Samsung Wallet chose Solana for USDC transfers on 82 million Galaxy devices. J.P. Morgan Asset Management brought two tokenized funds onchain, and Securitize launched 12 tokenized U.S. stocks.

October finished Solana’s performance roadmap in two steps. First, slot times reached 200 milliseconds on October 9, which completed a four-stage cut from 400 milliseconds. Then, on October 21, Alpenglow took over consensus with a finality target near 150 milliseconds. Neither change caused a reported outage. Meanwhile, Firedancer opened a bug bounty that pays triple for Alpenglow findings. Developers also gained web3.js v3, a monitoring tool, and a plan to retire durable nonces.

Institutions kept building settlement tools alongside the protocol work. The Solana Foundation released Solana DvP with input from J.P. Morgan on October 6. Two weeks later, J.P. Morgan Asset Management brought its MONY and JLTXX funds to Solana. Securitize, Mirae Asset Securities, and Ondo each added products as well. Hong Kong produced the month’s regional cluster, led by Anchorpoint’s plan to issue HKDAP natively on Solana.

Alpenglow Lands and the Performance Roadmap Closes

Alpenglow Replaces TowerBFT on Mainnet

Alpenglow went live on mainnet on October 21 in epoch 1064. It replaced TowerBFT, the consensus protocol Solana has run since launch. Solana Compass places the handoff at slot 459,653,000. Solana’s upgrade page sets a finality target of roughly 150 milliseconds, down from about 12.8 seconds. However, no independent party has published post-activation finality measurements yet. Before mainnet, a test cluster finalized 96% of blocks on the fast path at 214 milliseconds.

This first phase ships Votor, the new voting protocol, inside Agave 4.3. Execution stays the same, so programs, transactions, and fees work exactly as before. Vote transactions no longer appear in blocks, and “confirmed” and “finalized” now describe the same state. Validators needed an Agave-based client at version 4.3.2 and at least 0.8 SOL in their vote account. That balance covers the Validator Admission Ticket fee. Firedancer then joined the new consensus and began removing its TowerBFT code.

The path to launch carried some risk. On October 19, an Alpenglow tracker flagged 45% of stake as not ready. Most of it ran older 4.3 releases. Anza had already named version 4.3.2 the recommended release on October 16. After activation, Marinade tied some skipped leader slots to Alpenglow, and Agave 4.4.0-rc.1 carries a fix. Phase two, Rotor, will replace Turbine for block propagation, but Anza has not scheduled it. Anza CEO Brennan Watt explained the launch decisions in an interview with Genfinity days later.

Anza CEO Brennan Watt on Shipping Alpenglow’s 150ms Finality, Rotor Networking, and Location-Aware Validators

Slot Times Reach 200 Milliseconds

The final step of SIMD-0525 went live on October 9 at epoch 1053. It cut slot times from 250 milliseconds to 200. Earlier steps landed on August 21, August 28, and September 18. The first full epoch at the new target averaged 218.3 milliseconds and lasted 26.2 hours. Blockhashes now expire after 30 seconds, and each leader window runs 800 milliseconds.

Follow-on proposals came quickly. On October 10, Watt proposed raising the block compute limit from 50 million back to 100 million compute units. Agave also raised its default snapshot interval to 200,000 slots. Later, Agave 4.4.0 delivered what Anza called Solana’s final rent cuts. Anza asked for 20% of stake on the release candidate by October 30. It then told validators to upgrade to 4.4.0 three days early.

Solana Alpenglow Replaces TowerBFT, Targeting 150-Millisecond Finality Down From 12.8 Seconds

Firedancer Opens a Bug Bounty With Triple Alpenglow Rewards

Firedancer launched its bug bounty program on October 16 at bounty.firedancer.io. Through November 20, the program doubles rewards for all valid reports. It also triples rewards for findings related to Alpenglow. Each submission burns 1 SOL to discourage spam. The program follows Jump’s $1 million Immunefi audit contest from April and May. That contest drew 809 reports and 127 unique findings, and the most severe rated High. Firedancer also shipped four mainnet releases during October.

Developer Tools: web3.js v3, Durable Nonces, and Geo-Aware Leaders

The October changelogs added several tools for builders. web3.js v3 became ready for general use, and version 3.1 followed on October 16. It rebuilds the classic JavaScript API on Kit and adds a new wallet adapter. On October 6, Solana published a durable nonce deprecation plan. Removal will come about six months after a replacement goes live on mainnet. Candidates include Anza’s Programmatic Signer and Blueshift’s Vector.

Research and monitoring work landed too. A geo-aware leader schedule study for SIMD-0675 proposes reordering leaders to cut handoff latency. Notably, every validator keeps the same number of leader windows. Solana Microscope offers open-source program monitoring with Grafana dashboards and alerts through Slack, Telegram, and PagerDuty. Additionally, a Squads builder tested Falcon-512 post-quantum multisig voting on mainnet. On October 30, Watt proposed replacing standalone SIMDs with a single Solana Protocol Specification.

Institutions Build the Settlement Stack

Solana DvP Arrives With J.P. Morgan Input

The Solana Foundation launched Solana DvP on October 6. It is an open-source escrow program for delivery-versus-payment settlement under the MIT license. Both legs of a trade settle in one atomic transaction, or neither settles. J.P. Morgan contributed input on institutional settlement practice, though the release does not describe the bank as a user. The program supports SPL Token and Token-2022, including permanent delegates, pausable tokens, and transfer hooks. Any bank, custodian, or exchange can serve as the settlement agent.

An external audit cleared the code, and the Foundation calls it ready for real funds. Privacy features remain on the roadmap, and the Foundation wants design partners before a production release. Catherine Gu leads digital asset products at the Foundation. “Atomic settlement removes counterparty risk that is inherent in traditional finance,” she said. Rhodel D’souza of J.P. Morgan said the bank was “pleased to contribute our settlement expertise.” Our launch coverage walks through the escrow flow. The code sits on GitHub.

Solana DvP Gives Institutions an Open Escrow Standard to Settle Tokenized Assets and Cash in One Transaction

J.P. Morgan Asset Management Brings MONY and JLTXX to Solana

J.P. Morgan Asset Management expanded its tokenized money market funds to Solana on October 22. Qualified U.S. investors can now access MONY and JLTXX on Solana through Morgan Money. MONY first launched on Ethereum. The announcement landed one day after Alpenglow went live. As a result, J.P. Morgan appeared twice in Solana’s October news, once as an adviser and once as an issuer. The Genfinity breakdown covers the fund details.

JPMorgan Brings MONY and JLTXX Tokenized Money Market Funds to Solana for Qualified U.S. Investors

Mirae Asset Issues Tokenized Notes Through Marketnode

Mirae Asset Securities’ Hong Kong unit issued tokenized funding notes on Solana on October 28. The notes are USD six-month floating rate notes under its US$3 billion Guaranteed Structured Note Programme. That $3 billion figure describes the program, and Mirae did not disclose the issue size. Singapore-regulated Marketnode acted as authorized distributor. Mirae offered the notes only through private placement to institutions. It also ran issuance, payments, and lifecycle management on its own infrastructure, with support from the Solana Foundation.

Ondo Portfolios Use BlackRock Models

Ondo launched Intelligent Portfolios on Solana on October 29 for eligible non-U.S. investors. Each of the seven portfolios packs tokenized stocks and ETFs into a single token, and smart contracts handle rebalancing. Three portfolios follow BlackRock model allocations for high income, high growth, and diversified growth. However, BlackRock does not sponsor, manage, or distribute them. Ondo designed the other four in-house. Earlier, on October 19, LI.FI brought Ondo’s tokenized stocks and ETFs to Solana through LI.FI Intents.

A Registry for 3,293 Tokenized Assets

The Solana Foundation’s asset directory added the Solana Asset Registry on October 29. It lists 3,293 tokenized assets across fiat-backed, crypto-backed, fixed income, equity, and private fund categories. The registry shows data from Allium, RWA.xyz, and CoinGecko side by side, and it offers an API. At launch, it valued USDC on Solana at $6.53 billion through Allium and $6.50 billion through RWA.xyz.

Other institutional items rounded out the month. Fidelity’s FCAT published a report on October 17 that found Solana more reliable than in prior years. The same report noted that stake, hosting, and client software remain concentrated. Meanwhile, Google previewed MPC custody for banks, with Solana support “coming soon.” PrimeRevenue said it will tokenize electronic time drafts on Solana, without a launch date.

Tokenized Equities Move From Listing to Lending

Securitize Launches 12 U.S. Stocks

Securitize launched Securitize Stocks on Solana on October 8 with 12 U.S. equities. The lineup includes Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, and Palantir. A share backs each token 1:1, and holders own a security entitlement through Securitize Markets. Securitize calls this structure a convertible entitlement token. Trades settle in USDC, and Jump Trading makes markets on Securitize’s Solana PropAMM. Additionally, RQD handles clearing, custody, and settlement. EU investors can access the stocks through Securitize Europe. Ripple Prime said it plans to support the tokens, though no live integration exists yet.

Kamino Lends USDC Against Tokenized Stocks

Kamino opened a Backpack market on October 28. Users can now borrow USDC against tokenized SpaceX, Micron, SK Hynix, and SanDisk shares from Backpack Securities. The market gives tokenized equities a credit use beyond trading. Earlier, on October 16, Spout raised $2 million for 0% interest loans on tokenized U.S. stocks. It funds those loans through covered calls.

Backpack and Sunrise Keep Listing

Backpack Securities and Sunrise added listings throughout the month. Tokenized BlackRock stock arrived on October 2 and trades around the clock on Raydium. Powerus shares listed a day after its merger closed. Later weeks brought the EWZ Brazil ETF, Ferrari, and Broadcom. Sunrise also carried assets from other networks onto Solana, including NEAR and Zcash. Raydium’s Q3 net revenue rose 264% to $7.99 million, which Blockworks tied to tokenized stocks and LaunchLab.

Payments: Samsung Leads the Distribution Push

Samsung Wallet Picks Solana for USDC Transfers

Samsung Wallet selected Solana for cross-border USDC transfers on October 7. U.S. users can send USDC starting in the last week of October. The feature covers 82 million U.S. Galaxy devices at launch, and more markets will follow. It includes fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, with Coinbase and Bastion handling custody and payments. Solana Compass reports that Sui also serves as a network partner. We found no post-launch confirmation that the feature went live by month’s end.

Solana Foundation President Lily Liu framed the deal as a turning point. “We’re seeing the moment when stablecoins stop being a crypto product and start being how people move money,” she said. Woncheol Chai of Samsung Electronics said “Solana helps us bring that experience to Samsung’s scale.” The Foundation’s post also cites more than $5.25 trillion in Solana stablecoin volume during 2026. Our launch coverage details the rollout.

Samsung Wallet Brings Solana USDC Transfers to 82 Million US Galaxy Devices, With Payouts in 60+ Countries

Polygon, Circle, and Ramp Extend the Rails

Polygon’s Open Money Stack added Solana on October 29. Through one API, it links U.S. bank pay-ins to USDC, USDT, or PYUSD on Solana. It then routes funds back out to banks, cards, or cash. Polygon warned that support does not guarantee availability for every bank, token, or jurisdiction. Earlier, on October 6, Circle’s USDC bridge added Solana and linked it to 18 other chains. On October 24, Circle Gateway brought unified EURC balances to Solana.

Business payments gained ground as well. Ramp added USDG on Solana on October 16 with zero-fee dollar conversions. Meanwhile, Western Union widened distribution for USDPT, its Solana stablecoin from May. Bitso listed USDPT in Mexico on October 14. A week later, Western Union tapped Noah to pay remittances into Stablecard as USDPT. At Money20/20, an X9.150 demo let one invoice settle over FedNow, RTP, or USDC on Solana.

Hong Kong Becomes Solana’s Busiest Foreign Market

Anchorpoint Plans to Issue HKDAP on Solana

Anchorpoint plans to mint and redeem HKDAP natively on Solana, it said on October 30. Standard Chartered leads the joint venture, which holds one of Hong Kong’s first two HKMA stablecoin licenses. HSBC Hong Kong holds the other. HKDAP launched on Ethereum on August 12, backed 1:1 by Hong Kong dollar reserves. The Solana Foundation will also join Anchorpoint’s Tokenised Money Adoption Programme alongside PwC Hong Kong. However, Anchorpoint gave no Solana start date, and its FAQ still listed only Ethereum. Until Anchorpoint publishes a Solana mint address, no Solana token calling itself HKDAP is the licensed stablecoin.

Solana Company Joins Hong Kong’s Strategic Enterprise Program

The Hong Kong government named Solana Company a strategic enterprise on October 22. The Nasdaq-listed firm joined 17 others in the seventh OASES batch. It calls itself the only blockchain infrastructure company OASES onboarded in 2026. Solana Company opened a Hong Kong office as its Asia-Pacific headquarters. It also plans to run Solana validators in the city under its Pacific Backbone initiative. The release disclosed no investment figure, subsidy, or start date.

A Local ETF, Mirae’s Notes, and a Postponed Event

The Pando Solana ETF began trading in Hong Kong on October 13 under ticker 2831. Together with the Mirae notes, it gave Hong Kong four Solana stories in one month. One setback balanced the list. Organizers postponed Solana Accelerate Shanghai on October 16, the day it was set to open. They cited venue logistics, while Lily Liu pointed to the registration cap. No new date has surfaced.

Policy: Defining “Permissionless” for the SEC

Solana Policy Institute Proposes a Validator-Control Test

The Solana Policy Institute filed a comment letter on October 22. It responds to the SEC’s September 17 innovation exemption for tokenized securities venues. That order requires venues to run on a “public, permissionless distributed ledger” but leaves the term undefined. CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine and General Counsel Patrick Wilson signed the letter. They asked the SEC to judge permissionlessness by who controls transaction ordering and the validator set. Their five factors draw on the Senate CLARITY Act discussion draft.

The letter also requests a narrow carve-out for temporary emergency measures, such as pauses or patches. Operators would disclose each one and file a post-incident report. The carve-out “would preserve an operator’s ability to protect investors without permitting ongoing centralized control,” the letter states. Other filers took different positions on the same docket. Hedera argued on October 9 that public permissioned networks should qualify, and SIFMA asked for clarity on October 19. The SEC has not responded publicly.

Agencies Advance Crypto Rulemaking

Broader rulemaking continued during the month. On October 5, the CFTC issued an advance notice on retail crypto transactions. The Federal Register published the related market rules on October 13. Then, on October 21, SEC staff released an FAQ on the innovation exemption. Venues must now publish their operating and access standards at least 30 days before launch. None of these actions targets Solana specifically, but together they shape where tokenized stock venues can operate.

Capital Pulls Back While Large Holders Add

ETFs Post a Net Outflow Month

U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded about $99.6 million in net outflows through October 27, according to SoSoValue data. That day alone saw $19.16 million leave, the largest daily outflow since December 2025. Outflows hit all five sessions in the week of October 5. Total net assets ended the month near $1.5 billion, down from $1.93 billion in September. However, outflows explain only part of that drop. On a brighter note, VanEck’s VSOL declared its first staking distribution of $964,960 on October 7.

Treasury Companies Split

Treasury companies moved in opposite directions. Forward Industries ended its fiscal fourth quarter with 8.5 million SOL after adding 948,601 SOL. DeFi Development Corp passed 2.6 million SOL on October 30. In contrast, SkyAI, formerly Sharps Technology, sold its last SOL on October 15. It held more than 2 million SOL in mid-September. SkyAI then ran a tender offer of up to $201.3 million and rejected a Forward Industries proposal. Holder Bastion Trading refused to tender and demanded sale details, and the parties settled on October 28.

Solana Lending Absorbs the Binance Hack

Attackers began draining Binance at 20:05 UTC on October 29. TRM Labs estimates the theft at roughly $6.36 billion and attributes it to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. Within minutes, 970,500 SOL left Binance’s Solana hot wallet. Kamino paused borrowing in its SOL/BTC market at 22:03 UTC as a precaution. Co-founder Marius Ciubotariu said Kamino blocked the attacker’s wallet within five minutes of spotting it. Borrowing resumed the next afternoon, about 17 hours later, while deposits and repayments ran normally throughout.

Jupiter Lend faced a different problem. It had no Binance exposure, but a liquidity crunch queued its withdrawals. At one point, its USDC vault had about 7,900 USDC withdrawable against 420 million supplied. USDC withdrawals returned about 13 hours later. Velocity also paused new deposits on October 31 to keep stolen funds out. No Solana protocol reported losses, and attackers exploited no Solana code.

Binance Hack: Onchain Trackers Estimate $5.6 Billion Outflow as Binance Reports $2.54 Billion Frozen

Wallets, Hardware, and Ecosystem Moves

Solana Mobile Partners With Ledger

Solana Mobile named Ledger its first hardware expansion partner on October 15. The companies announced it on stage at Ledger Op3n in Paris. Ledger Atom, a touchscreen Android device, will ship with the Seeker app and dApp Store. It targets summer 2027. Additionally, Solana Mobile released Seeker Connect on October 21, a one-tap wallet SDK for Expo, Kotlin, and web apps. A buy-and-burn for the SKR token also started on October 15.

Ledger Atom Puts a Hardware Signer Between AI Agents and Your Keys

Jupiter, Solflare, and Staking Infrastructure

Jupiter and BitGo launched an institutional validator on October 28. BitGo clients can now stake SOL directly from custody. Jupiter also opened a Bridge beta that compares five providers. Meanwhile, Solflare launched Earn on October 26, with in-wallet USDC yield powered by Kamino. On the infrastructure side, Helius opened preconfirmations to all paid plans on October 17. Jito added direct bundle ingest for BAM, and Sanctum released swSOL, which pays staking yield to integrators.

Akash, Formation, and Other Migrations

Akash Network chose Solana to replace its Cosmos chain on October 26. Separately, Orca and Loopscale agreed to merge into a new entity called Formation on October 8. Beezie wound down its Base deployment and consolidated on Solana. Yuga Labs launched Mudwater, a physical and digital BAYC trading card game, on Solana. Additionally, the first Wakefern grocery stores went live on the Helium Network. The Foundation also published its Solana and AI thesis, which calls Solana “the democratization layer for AI.”

Interviews: Builders Explain Their Solana Bets

Four Genfinity interviews in October showed why teams choose Solana. Anza CEO Brennan Watt discussed shipping Alpenglow on a live network securing over $50 billion. He said new features had to run under both consensus systems during development. He also described Rotor and geographic awareness as the next steps. Earlier, R3 CEO Richard Brown explained why R3 picked Solana for Corda protocol. He expected R3 to choose the EVM, but parallel execution and audited token standards changed his mind.

On October 1, OnRe CEO Dan Roberts described moving $300 million in reinsurance premiums onchain. He argued that composability, not tokenization alone, creates the value. As a result, ONyc now supports lending markets, tranches, and fixed-yield products from one base asset. Meanwhile, Rosentica founder Natsuki walked through One Arena, a game layer for tokenized graded cards. Players battle with real Pokemon and One Piece cards, and winners take the cards home.

R3 CEO Richard Brown on Why Corda Protocol Brings Institutional RWA Yield Vaults to Solana

October by the Numbers

Usage Held Up While Capital Pulled Back

Solana processed 5.01 billion non-vote transactions in October, up 5.9%, according to DeFi Development Corp. That marks the second-highest month on record. Daily active addresses rose 9.0% to 2.84 million. However, spot DEX volume fell to $61.0 billion from $78.3 billion in September. Bitquery also traced 22.7% of Raydium CLMM volume to one wash-trading wallet, which warrants caution on volume figures. App revenue reached about $158 million in the 30 days to October 24, up from $146 million.

Stablecoin supply declined from its September record of about $17.3 billion. Late October readings ranged between $15.2 billion and $15.8 billion. Real-world asset value on Solana ran between $4.4 billion and $5.1 billion, depending on the tracker. Bitwise reported that 69% of SOL supply sat staked at the end of Q3 across 659 validators. These monthly figures come from third-party trackers rather than the Foundation, so treat them as estimates.

November Calendar

Breakpoint 2026 runs at Olympia London from November 15 through 17 under the theme “Token Supercycle.” The lineup announced in late October mixes UK policy figures, payments firms, and asset managers. Speakers include Revolut Chair Martin Gilbert, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, and DTCC’s Val Wotton. Network voices include Brennan Watt of Anza and Mert Mumtaz of Helius. Firedancer’s boosted bounty rewards end November 20. R3 targets the full Corda protocol launch ahead of Breakpoint. Rotor still has no activation date.

*Disclaimer: News content provided by Genfinity is intended solely for informational purposes. While we strive to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, we do not offer financial or legal advice of any kind. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any financial or legal decisions. Genfinity disclaims any responsibility for actions taken based on the information presented in our articles. Our commitment is to share knowledge, foster discussion, and contribute to a better understanding of the topics covered in our articles. We advise our readers to exercise caution and diligence when seeking information or making decisions based on the content we provide.

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