CRYPTO 101 Ep. 714 Why Solana Could Dominate Crypto (And What Ethereum Got Wrong) with SOL Strategies
Mar 23, 2026
Max Kaplan, CTO of Sol Strategies and ex-Kraken engineering lead, builds Solana validators, staking, and institutional infrastructure. He explains why real revenue and block-space demand will shape crypto’s future. The conversation covers liquid staking, ETF integrations, Solana’s low-fee scaling, on-chain trading advantages, L2 fragmentation risks, and upcoming catalysts like Alpenglow and tokenized real-world assets.
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Operator-Owned Treasury And Validators Align With Network Bet
- Sol Strategies combines a Sol-denominated treasury with running proprietary validators to align incentives and support network growth.
- They hold significant SOL, operate four validators with ~3.5M SOL delegated, offer white-label validators, and launched a liquid staking token (LST).
Building An ETF Reporting Layer For TradFi Integration
- Max describes building an ETF reporting layer to translate crypto epoch rewards into trad‑fi reporting for VanEck's Solana ETF.
- That work required mapping epochs, MEV, inflation and block rewards into ETF accounting to satisfy institutional reporting needs.
Meet Users Where They Are With Staking Options
- Offer products matched to risk tolerance when staking to capture more users.
- Sol Strategies launched a liquid staking token to meet users who want composable stake despite added smart-contract risk and native staking's 2‑day unstake delay.
