NYSE Picks Avalanche, New Platforms Bet on Solana: This Wave of "Old Chains Finding New Use" Is Not Bullish for Token Prices

TechFlow Briefing: On November 9, the NYSE selected Avalanche for the settlement of tokenized stocks, sending AVAX up by as much as 10%. On the same day, Formation filed to launch a tokenized stock trading venue on Solana. However, under regulatory guidelines, for large-cap stocks, only one out of every 400 shares can be traded on-chain.

If you saw AVAX surge yesterday, it was because of the NYSE.

On November 9, Ava Labs announced that the NYSE's upcoming tokenized stock platform has chosen Avalanche as its ledger for clearing and settlement. The platform aims to offer 24/7 trading and is still awaiting regulatory approval.

AVAX surged from $7.82 to $8.85 that day, peaking at roughly a 10% increase. Open interest in contracts rose by approximately 26% on the same day, with Binance and Bybit accounting for 77% of the activity. The capital that rushed in first was clearly leveraged money betting on the narrative.

On the same day, Solana also had some good news.

A new company called Formation Securities notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of its plan to launch a tokenized stock trading venue on Solana, aiming to open in early 2027.

Taken together, these developments reinforce the ongoing trend of traditional capital going on-chain and established tokens seeing renewed speculation.

But after looking at the actual proposals from both sides, you might not be quite so optimistic. Wall Street is indeed going on-chain, but mostly onto chains they can control themselves. Capital flows first into companies selling technology and distribution channels, leaving very little to actually empower and move token prices.

The NYSE Is Buying Into the Technology Itself, With Minimal Impact on AVAX

In terms of cooperation details, the NYSE is not using the Avalanche public chain, but rather a dedicated chain customized to its own regulatory requirements. The exchange will decide which institutions can connect and who runs the nodes.

Dennis Lee, Head of Digital Issuance at the NYSE, cited the reasons for choosing it: speed, stability, predictable costs upfront, and the ability to control access. The crux of the matter lies precisely in this final point—the right to control the chain—which a public chain obviously cannot provide.

So how much toll fee does this chain need to pay to AVAX?

The answer is very little, and it is set by Avalanche itself. Prior to December 2024, each validation node on such a dedicated chain had to stake 2,000 AVAX. For institutions to join the chain, they first had to buy the token on the market. To attract enterprises to the chain that year, Avalanche removed this threshold through the Etna upgrade, changing it to a monthly fee of approximately 1.33 AVAX per node, which is burned upon payment. Transaction fees on the chain can also be paid with its native token.

If the NYSE runs 30 nodes, the AVAX burned annually would be less than 480. At a current price of around $4,000, compared to AVAX's roughly $3.9 billion market cap, this doesn't even make up the small change...

The entire network is on a similar scale. According to VanEck's September estimates, approximately 850 such nodes combined contribute about $160,000 to the mainnet annually. So, while institutions have indeed arrived, they barely need to buy AVAX anymore.

Solana Got Its Ticket, But Not the Trading Volume

By comparison, Solana's approach looks more like what a public chain should be.

Formation is not a legacy Wall Street institution; it's a veteran player on Solana. Last October, Solana-based DEX Orca and lending protocol Loopscale merged to form Formation. The entity filing for registration this time, Formation Securities, is its newly established securities business, with trading technology licensed directly from Orca.

On November 9, Formation Securities notified the SEC of its intention to operate a tokenized stock trading venue on Solana, claiming to be the first of its kind on the network.

The proposal roughly works as follows:

Once listed companies give their approval, issuers Superstate and Securitize will convert the shares into tokens. After investors pass identity verification, the stock tokens are stored in their personal wallets for 24/7 buying and selling with stablecoins. Settlement of shares and funds occurs within a single Solana transaction. Dividends and voting rights mirror those of common stock, and the stock tokens can also be integrated into approved on-chain applications. The initial phase plans to list shares from three companies, with trading set to begin in early 2027.

Why Solana?

Formation provides three reasons: speed, low cost, and the fact that there are already over $5 billion in tokenized real-world assets on Solana. They've been paving this path for over a year and a half. In April 2025, Orca jointly submitted a proposal to the SEC with Superstate and the Solana Policy Institute for trading stocks on a public chain.

The biggest difference from the NYSE deal is that this time, the public Solana chain is used, with barriers only applied to the liquidity pools. Every execution is a Solana transaction, and fees are paid in SOL.

Their willingness to proceed relies on the innovation exemption released by the SEC on September 17. This exemption requires trading contracts to be deployed on a public chain, effectively reserving a spot for public blockchains.

However, regulators clearly do not intend for on-chain U.S. equities to grow rapidly overnight.

For large-cap stocks like those in the S&P 500 and Russell 1000, a venue can trade at most 75 tickers, and the on-chain volume for each ticker cannot exceed 0.25% of its average daily volume from the previous month. In other words, out of every 400 shares traded, at most one can be completed on-chain. Limits for other stocks are relaxed to 2.5%. A second violation results in an immediate three-month trading halt.

A Solana transaction fee is already less than one cent. Multiplied by the capped trading volume, this pie simply won't grow significantly in the short term.

As for the first three stocks, it is even more intriguing. "For tokenized stocks to succeed, listed companies must see the value in them," said Christopher Montagano, President of Formation Securities.

Yet the ones he brought on board are shares from Exodus, Forward Industries, and Galaxy. One makes crypto wallets, another is a Solana treasury company holding around 8.5 million SOL, and the third is one of the backers behind Forward.

To put it bluntly, the first batch of U.S. stocks trading on Solana are still being championed by insiders from the crypto circle.

Familiar Pattern

If you chased the Goldman Sachs rally back in September, this recent move in AVAX should look very familiar.

On September 29, when Goldman Sachs' treasury fund connected to the Avalanche dedicated chain, AVAX surged nearly 12% in a single day, reaching a six-month high of $11.92. Over the following six weeks, it steadily fell back to around $7.80, representing a drawdown of roughly one-third. This NYSEC deal marks the opening act of the exact same script.

Today, crypto is indeed being accepted by Wall Street. Within a year, entities like the NYSE, DTCC, Goldman Sachs, and Nasdaq are all migrating clearing, custody, and distribution to blockchain technology. Regulators have even issued a dedicated five-year exemption. Blockchain as a technology is gradually becoming Wall Street infrastructure.

It's just that the manner of acceptance isn't the kind everyone cheerfully welcomes—I mean, the kind that drives long-term token price appreciation.

Old money wants the settlement speed and 24/7 trading offered by blockchain, not the tokens themselves. They build private chains, paying only a small entrance fee for the tokens; and even when deployed on public chains, trading volumes are capped by regulation.

The technology gets bought up, but the token price doesn't get swept up along with it. This may well be the reason why surviving crypto projects today can experience catalysts but fall short of epic transformations.

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