Following years of uninspiring stock returns, the Canadian crypto holding company Cypherpunk Holdings tapped board member and ex-Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald as CEO last summer. After taking the reins, Wald remade the company into a Solana DAT — several months before DAT mania took hold of Wall Street.
$SOL Strategies has particularly honed in on Solana staking. The company acquired Solana validators from Orangefin Ventures, Cogent Crypto, and Laine. It has hired multiple staking-focused executives and has made more ecosystem-focused staking moves like launching a Pudgy Penguins white label validator and powering the Solana Mobile validator.
$SOL Strategies’ stock is up almost 900% over the past year, but its roughly $90 million in $SOL holdings makes it significantly smaller than the three largest Solana DATs, which all hold between $380 and $420 million in $SOL. That’s likely been partly due to $SOL Strategies’ lack of access to the US market.