Tokenised Stock Venue on Solana Files SEC Notice for 2027
Formation Securities has notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to run a tokenised securities venue on Solana, with trading in shares of three US-listed companies expected to begin in early 2027. The 9 November filing places the firm among a small group of operators testing the SEC's new Innovation Exemption, and makes it the first to stake that claim on Solana specifically.
For finance professionals, the useful detail is procedural. The filing starts a regulatory clock, and sign-off from the regulator is a separate step that this notice does not represent.
What did Formation Securities actually file?
A notice of intent, governed by a strict procedure. Formation, which licenses its trading technology from Orca, says it will operate under the Innovation Exemption, the conditional relief the SEC granted on 17 September 2026. Under staff guidance published on 20 October 2026, a venue must post a public operating notice at least 30 calendar days before it begins trading and inform the SEC within one business day of publishing. Clearing that timetable does not establish that a venue meets the exemption's conditions, and the regulator does not separately approve either the venue or its choice of blockchain.
Formation's public notice sits on its own site, and trading is scheduled for early 2027.
The exemption itself is time-boxed. It runs for five years, from 17 September 2026 to 17 September 2031, and lifts qualifying tokenised securities venues from the definition of an "exchange" so they can host secondary trading of tokenised National Market System stock through permissioned automated market maker pools.
Which stocks would trade, and who stands behind them?
At launch, Formation expects to carry tokenised shares of Exodus Movement (EXOD), Forward Industries (FWDI) and Galaxy Digital (GLXY). Two of the three are already onchain: Galaxy tokenised its Nasdaq-listed Class A stock on Solana in September 2025 through Superstate's Opening Bell platform, and Forward Industries, the largest corporate holder of SOL, followed with tokenised FWDI shares, in both cases with Superstate acting as SEC-registered transfer agent. Formation would give those existing tokens a dedicated secondary-trading venue rather than create them from scratch.
Securitize and Superstate are both expected to supply tokenised shares. Securitize's structure, which it calls a Convertible Entitlement Token, backs each token one-for-one with a real share held by its broker-dealer and records it as a security entitlement under Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code, with access limited to verified investors. Holders keep voting and dividend rights, and the issuer's transfer agent continues to maintain the official shareholder record.
Access would run through the Formation platform and a roster of distribution partners, including the brokerage Alpaca, CoinList's Passage, the custodians Anchorage Digital, BitGo and Fireblocks, Jito's trading interface JTX, and the wallet providers Solflare and Squads.
How does this differ from the tokenised stocks already trading?
The selling point is legal ownership of the share itself, with the rights that come with it. Much of the existing market in tokenised equities consists of offshore tokens that follow a share price without conveying the underlying share. The Innovation Exemption, by contrast, requires eligible tokenised stock to carry the same rights and privileges as ordinary shares, including voting and dividends. Securitize's chief executive, Carlos Domingo, has publicly criticised the opacity and counterparty risk of synthetic, price-tracking tokens, a distinction that now carries regulatory weight.
Why Solana, and how large is the onchain stock market in reality?
Speed and cost, set against a market that is still small. Formation cites Solana as home to more than $5bn of tokenised real-world assets, where transactions settle in seconds for a fraction of a cent. Tokenised stocks are a modest slice of that total: roughly $465m traded on Solana in mid-September 2026, and the value of tokenised stocks across all blockchains passed $3bn only in October.
Solana is also not the unanimous choice of venue operators. On the same day as Formation's filing, the New York Stock Exchange said it would use the Avalanche blockchain to settle tokenised stocks. Formation joins a field that is already forming: a venue called TSV LLC filed its notice in September, and operators linked to OKX and ICE, and to Perpetuals.com, filed in October. That makes Formation one entrant among several, distinguished mainly by its choice of Solana as the settlement layer.
How did the market get here?
The venue traces back to Project Open, a proposal submitted to the SEC's Crypto Task Force on 30 April 2025 by the Solana Policy Institute, Superstate and Orca, with legal support from Lowenstein Sandler. It sketched an 18-month pilot for issuing and trading shares directly on public blockchains. The coalition then worked with SEC staff on the mechanics, and the Innovation Exemption arrived in September 2026, two days after the CLARITY Act digital-asset bill failed to advance in the Senate on 15 September 2026.
Christopher Montagano, Formation's president, said the venue is designed to build the market together with issuers and to offer trading beyond standard market hours with faster onchain settlement, while preserving the rights shareholders hold in traditional markets.
Orca, which launched its automated market maker on Solana in early 2021, says traders have run more than $550bn through its AMM software, and that the code has been formally verified by Certora and audited eleven times by four other security firms. Formation says it will launch with a set of compliance and monitoring providers, among them Solidus Labs and TRM Labs.
Why This Matters to FinanceX Readers
Tokenised equities have spent two years as a product in search of a venue. The Innovation Exemption supplies the regulatory lane, and Formation's filing is one of the first attempts to use it with named, SEC-registered issuers and a public settlement chain. For investors, the question moves on from whether US-listed shares can trade onchain with full shareholder rights to who controls the venues, the custody and the liquidity when they do. For issuers, a round-the-clock market with near-instant settlement has clear appeal, though the exemption's caps on listed symbols and trading volume, its verification requirements and its five-year clock keep this firmly in the pilot phase. The contest between Solana and Avalanche for the settlement layer is now live.
