Solana Breakpoint 2025

Earlier this month, our team attended Solana Breakpoint in Abu Dhabi: the largest Solana conference to date. Having attended many Breakpoints, this years theme was the clearest: Trading. Solana is leaning into becoming the venue for on-chain trading, with better-than-CEX execution, all on the same layer. And with two ‘competing’ independent clients now fully deployed, the Anza and Firedancer teams have been cooking. To quote Anatoly himself: “this is where [we] rip off the beta tag.”

"This is where we rip off the beta tag"

- Anatoly Yakovenko, Breakpoint 2025.

Key Takeaway

Solana’s goal is now clear: become the primary venue for trading assets on the internet. We’re sure you’re familiar with the meme “Nasdaq onchain”. This was Solana’s vision from the start, and is why Project Serum was deployed less than 6 months post Solana’s mainnet launch. Solana, in our view, may finally have a real shot at realising its vision in 2026.

Institutional Adoption Is Accelerating

The big theme: PropAMMs (Proprietary Automated Market Makers). PropAMMs give market makers more price flexibility and the opportunity to be selective about who they trade with. They are private forks of your typical AMM, with a few performance enhancements. The freedom to be selective about who they trade with (and how) allows them to quote tighter spreads for the average user.

Other notable updates:

• Galaxy Digital are launching a prop AMM on Solana, tokenizing its public equity (GLXY), and introduced Sweep; a tokenized money-market fund with instant redemption into PYUSD
• Bitwise launched the BSOL ETF on the NYSE
• Singapore Gulf Bank launched a new stablecoin offering with Solana as its primary settlement network, covering gas and minting fees for stablecoin flows between Singapore and the Gulf
• Bhutan’s DK Bank announced the world’s first sovereign-backed gold token on Solana
• OSL launched USDGO, a regulated stablecoin payments infrastructure, selecting Solana as its first onchain partner

Network Performance and Resilience

• Block capacity increased from 48M to 60M compute units, with updates deployed to scale to 100M
• New networking upgrades leveraging XDP deliver ~200× performance improvements over legacy socket infrastructure
• Epoch boundary processing reduced from >2 seconds to <400ms
• Validator restart times reduced from ~30 minutes historically to under 30 seconds

Client Diversity and Network Redundancy

In 2025, the Firedancer and Anza teams have been competing to push updates that make Solana faster and more resilient:

• The original Agave client. Optimised with almost 6,000 commits in 2025 alone
• Firedancer. Full client is now live. Used by close to 30% of the network’s stake

High Performance Networking: DoubleZero

DoubleZero has deployed dedicated fibre between major cities for high-performance trading:

• Frankfurt–Tokyo routes ~40% faster than the public internet
• Multicast shred distribution delivering ~100ms latency advantages
• A planned London–Tokyo cable expected to provide ~200ms improvement

Evolving Block Construction

Solana’s block-building architecture is also evolving:

• Multiple Concurrent Proposers (MCP) removes reliance on a single leader, improving censorship resistance and oracle fairness
• Harmonic introduces a competitive block-builder marketplace optimised for high-volume propAMMs
• Jito BAM continues to grow, now representing ~8% of stake, with Firedancer integration underway

What This Means For You

Solana is becoming core financial infrastructure. Institutions are deploying production systems today. A clear Solana strategy for 2026 is now more important than ever.

Validator and infrastructure selection matters more than ever. Performance, networking, and block-building capabilities increasingly determine execution quality and staking rewards outcomes.

If you’d like to discuss how these developments impact your Solana deployment or staking strategy, our team is ready to help. Reach out to us if you have any questions.