Formation notifies SEC of plan for 24/7 tokenized stock trading on Solana

What happened

Formation Securities said Monday that it has filed a notice with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission outlining its intention to operate a tokenized securities venue on Solana. The company said the platform would run under the SEC's Innovation Exemption, the conditional relief the agency issued in September that allows eligible tokenized stocks to trade through permissioned automated market maker pools on qualifying venues.

Trading is expected to begin in early 2027, according to the company. Tokenized shares of Exodus Movement, Forward Industries and Galaxy Digital are anticipated among the first securities available at launch.

The venue would let verified investors buy and sell eligible U.S.-listed shares around the clock using stablecoins and digital wallets, with each trade settling atomically onchain. Formation said the tokens would carry the same voting and dividend rights as traditional shares, while a company's transfer agent would continue to keep the official shareholder record.

Formation licenses its trading technology from Orca, a Solana-based exchange. Tokenization firms Securitize and Superstate are expected to supply tokenized shares. Access would be distributed through Formation's own platform and partners including Alpaca, CoinList's Passage, Anchorage Digital Bank, BitGo Bank & Trust, Fireblocks, Solflare and Squads.

Why it matters

The filing adds another entrant to a growing field of efforts to put traditional equities on public blockchains. Formation's pitch rests on combining blockchain settlement with the rights investors expect from real stock, a combination the SEC's exemption makes conditional on tokens carrying equivalent voting and dividend rights and on venues publishing disclosures about their trading activity.

Formation is also positioning itself around issuer involvement. Christopher Montagano, president of Formation Securities, said tokenized stocks will succeed only if public companies see value in them and that the firm intends to build the market together with issuers. That contrasts with some existing tokenized stock products, where the underlying companies have not necessarily sponsored the offerings.

What the data shows

Formation said Orca's automated market maker software has processed more than $550 billion in digital asset trades through October 31. The company named Predicate, Sec3, Solidus Labs and TRM Labs as providers for compliance and transaction monitoring.

Under its public notice, the platform would publish transaction information including prices, trading volumes and timestamps, along with the smart contract addresses of its liquidity pools, daily share volumes and pool balances. Official shareholder records would remain with applicable transfer agents.

Background

The SEC's exemption, issued September 17, permits eligible stocks to trade through permissioned automated market maker pools rather than traditional order books. Participating venues must keep limits on trading volumes and the number of securities offered, verify that tokenized shares carry rights equivalent to their traditional counterparts, and publish proposed arrangements at least 30 days before opening.

Formation's plan builds on Project Open, a proposal submitted to the SEC's Crypto Task Force in April 2025 by a coalition including Orca, Superstate and the Solana Policy Institute. The company said it chose Solana for its speed, low costs and track record with tokenized assets, noting the network hosts more than $5 billion in tokenized real-world assets.

Other tokenized stock efforts are already underway. Securitize confirmed in October that 12 tokenized U.S. stocks were available on Solana for eligible investors, including products referencing Apple, Nvidia and Tesla. On November 4, Canton Strategic Holdings completed tokenized stock transactions on the Canton Network under the September exemption. The NYSE has tapped Avalanche for its planned tokenized securities platform, and an OKX-ICE venue is also in the works.

What is still unclear

Submitting a notice does not establish that the SEC has approved a particular venue or confirmed its compliance. Formation has not started trading, and its proposed launch remains subject to the conditions of the exemption. The company has not said how quickly it expects the remaining steps toward launch to proceed.

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