The major digital asset investment firm Grayscale has launched a new solana (SOL)-backed regulated investment product in the US, opening up exposure to the smart contract and decentralized finance (DeFi) space for more investors.
The new product, known as the Grayscale Solana Trust, is already listed among Grayscale‘s other digital asset investment products on the company’s website. According to the listing, the fund already has USD 9.5m under management, and comes with a 2.5% annual management fee.
The trust will “solely and passively hold the underlying asset,” while assets will be raised for the trust through a regular private placement offering, Grayscale wrote in an announcement of the new product today. The Solana Trust is only available to accredited investors (institutional investors, as well as some high-net worth individuals) and will also require a USD 25,000 minimum investment.
Commenting on the new investment product to Forbes, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said that there is “a continued appetite to invest in Solana” among investors, and that it is “a more cost-effective blockchain” than Ethereum (ETH).
“Whats been interesting about Solana is that it gives users the ability to learn, experiment, and build,” Sonnenshein was quoted as saying. “They generally have more budget to experiment on the protocol than some other more established blockchains like Ethereum, because of lower transaction fees.”
Solanas native token has seen strong performance over the past year, with a rise of more than 11,500% year-to-date. The massive yearly gains mean that SOL has outperformed all of the other major smart contract platform tokens, including ethereum (ETH), cardano (ADA), and polkadot (DOT), by a wide margin this year.
The strong performance for the Solana protocols native token has been seen despite some hiccups along the way, including a situation back in September this year that caused the entire network to go offline.
At 14:40 UTC, SOL traded at USD 214, up 3% over the past 24 hours but down just over 10% over the past 7 days.