CEO of Backpack, Armani Ferrante, outlined a plan to expand access to tokenized stocks on Solana from around 200 symbols to 10,000. According to a post published by Solana on September 26, Ferrante aims to make the entire stock market accessible through a system that connects traditional securities accounts with DeFi applications. “Not 10 stocks, not 100 stocks. We want to bring the entire stock market to Solana,” Ferrante said in a clip. He described a unified API through which a real stock can move from a brokerage account to DeFi and back. The transition from 200 to 10,000 symbols was termed by Ferrante as the “next step,” but the launch date and the list of stocks for priority addition were not disclosed. The figure of 200 symbols is a starting point, not a confirmation that Backpack Securities has already issued 200 separate tokenized stocks on Solana.
Backpack launched its securities platform in June: clients can hold U.S. stocks and ETFs through a brokerage service and convert eligible assets into tokenized securities. The deposit of a supported token through Backpack Exchange converts it back into a traditional right to the security. Brokerage assets are rights to securities under Article 8 of the New York Uniform Commercial Code. The service supports cash dividends, corporate actions, and transfers through the ACATS and Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation infrastructure.
Backpack tokens on Solana are stored in compatible wallets, transferred between users, and used in DeFi according to the rules of specific products. In June, the first tokenized product SpaceX (SPCX) was launched in collaboration with Sunrise on Solana. In July, Backpack added tokenized versions of other U.S. companies, including Micron and SanDisk, for users outside the U.S. The announcement from CoreWeave on September 23 described the conversion: a client withdraws the paper as a CRWV token on Solana, then deposits the token back into the brokerage account.
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