Happy Wednesday! Today we look at Solana's equity market structure with competing issuers now listing overlapping US stocks on different liquidity models. The question is whether that fragments liquidity and who wins on execution? On markets, rates set the tone yesterday: Japan's 10-year hit 3%, September hike odds climbed to 66%, and gold and BTC both slipped, while DEXs were the lone standout and Privacy kept its month-long run going.

Yesterday was a rates story. Japan's 10-year yield hit a 30-year high of 3%, the US 10-year climbed to a 20-month high of 4.79%, and September hike odds rose to 66% from 40% in a week. Gold fell hardest at -2.8%, followed by BTC (-1.7%), NASDAQ 100 (-1.2%) and S&P 500 (-0.8%).

Crypto mostly followed, with one glaring exception: DEXs at 9.9%. Modular (3.8%), Lending (3.0%), Ethereum Eco (2.3%) and DePIN (2.0%) were the only other sectors meaningfully green, while the high-beta end sold with rates (Bittensor Ecosystem -4.9%, AI -4.3%, Solana Eco -3.6%, Launchpad -3.0%).

The weekly view is the same picture at scale. DEXs are up 33.2%, more than triple the next sector, Privacy (10.6%), with Perps (4.2%) and DeFi (3.8%) the only others above 2%. Solana Eco (-13.8%) and Crypto Miners (-9.3%) sit at the bottom, BTC slipped -1.4%, and gold's -6.8% is the worst week among the benchmarks.

Privacy was the only notable sector besides DEXs, +10.6% on the week and up 57.7% on the month. ZEC (55.5% of the index) is up 70.1% over the month after Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into ZCSH, the first US spot privacy-coin ETF. In addition, on Aug. 25. XMR (37.9%) added 14.8% on the week after THORChain's 3.20 upgrade enabled native XMR and ZEC swaps.

The shielded supply says the ZEC move has legs. After slipping to about 4.5M ZEC over the summer, it jumped back toward 4.9M this week, close to May's 5.2M high and more than double the start of 2025. 

— Sam

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Solana’s Equity Market Structure

As more sophisticated investors move onchain, issuers will compete on price, depth and reliability. Backpack and xStocks offer overlapping tokenized US equities with different liquidity profiles, creating a natural experiment in which model delivers better execution. 

From June 12 to Aug. 24, Backpack generated $2.64B in Solana single-name equity DEX volume versus $1.10B for xStocks. The two run on very different stacks: known prop AMMs handled 62% of Backpack’s volume from June 1 to Aug. 31, while public pools handled 86% of xStocks’ volume. The question is whether that produced different prices for users.

Measured against the stock's own touch (SIP NBBO by day, Blue Ocean overnight), realized $100 to $20,000 SPCX fills landed 0.29 bps outside the touch on Backpack versus 2.91 bps on xStocks. Realized fills need an observable stock quote, so weekends go uncovered and note that comparisons are not simultaneous.

Matched Jupiter quotes for the same stock and size extend the test simultaneously around the clock. Across eight equities, Backpack quoted the tighter round trip on 100% of qualifying days for $500 to $10,000 orders, a median 30 to 38 bps edge that narrows to 2.8 bps at $50,000 as prop AMM quotes thin out. Scored against the stock's midpoint at $5,000, Backpack was cheaper in 78% of tests and 96% of 30-minute periods. 

Interestingly, in this simulation, Backpack's SPCX liquidity also benefits xStocks users: aggregators fill SPCXx orders by buying Backpack's SPCX and swapping it near 1:1 into SPCXx. On $1,000 SPCXx quotes, 81% of the buy route and 64% of the sell route passed through Backpack SPCX; the reverse was 2.1% to 4.7% of buys and zero sells.

Hence, competing issuers on Solana do not necessarily fragment liquidity as aggregators can stitch every source into one atomic route. Notably, in tradfi and less composable venues, duplicate listings sit in separate order books and bridging them takes intermediary capital or credit.

— Sam

Markets are Living Systems 

Chase from the Solana Foundation published an essay arguing that charts work like an ECG, tracing impulses underneath, and markets are feedback loops, not measures of value. He felt it with Solana in 2020, built for a world that did not yet exist; price caught up later.

He senses the same with Zcash as scattered privacy conversations collide with AI, surveillance and quantum computing: markets are repricing the odds that the world it was built for is arriving. Culture drives narrative, attention, capital and price, and AI now trades that loop 24 hours a day at machine speed.

The Financial Container

Carlos from Blockworks Research published a Derive update arguing the thesis is playing out. August was a record month: $1.92B in options notional, 79% of volume (65% in March), and net fees of $276K, a 2026 high, as options maker rebates fell from 28% of gross fees to 7.5%. XAUT, listed in late July, traded $40M in its first full month, 4x HYPE's pace.

Derive’s BTC options volume remained near 2% of Deribit’s, below the 4% base case, and remains the main lever. Buybacks now equal 1.6x staking emissions following April’s governance change; DRV trades at 43x trailing sales.