Settling a securities trade takes one to two business days in traditional markets. The Solana Foundation says its new programme does it in seconds.
Solana DvP, announced on Tuesday, is an open-source escrow programme for delivery-versus-payment, the principle that a security and the cash paying for it change hands at the same moment. Both legs settle in a single atomic transaction or neither does. The code carries an MIT licence.
Catherine Gu, the foundation’s head of product for digital assets, said atomic settlement removes the counterparty risk inherent in traditional finance. In the conventional system that risk is managed by a chain of clearing houses, depositories and custodians.
The programme works with Solana’s standard token formats, including the extensions regulated issuers rely on, such as pausable tokens, transfer hooks and a permanent delegate. The foundation says it has passed external security audits. Privacy features for confidential settlement are planned, not shipped.
JPMorgan’s part is narrower than the billing suggests. The foundation’s release says the bank provided valuable input on institutional settlement practices and requirements. The same release states that the bank did not design, develop, operate, approve, endorse or guarantee the programme.
Rhodel D’souza of JPMorgan did offer a quote, calling a shared, open standard for atomic delivery-versus-payment the kind of foundational infrastructure institutional participants require. The bank has history here, having arranged a commercial paper deal for Galaxy Digital that settled in USDC on Solana.
What the announcement lacks is a user. No bank, broker or issuer was named as adopting it, and no volumes were given. Free code becomes a standard only when counterparties agree to meet on it, and until the privacy work lands, any institution that did would be settling its trades in public.
