The upcoming launch of Solana (SOL) futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a US derivatives exchange, signals that the first US SOL exchange-traded fund (ETF) listings are coming soon, Chris Chung, founder of Solana-based swap platform Titan, told Cointelegraph.
On March 17, CME is preparing to launch SOL futures contracts. They will be among the first regulated Solana futures to hit the US market after Coinbase’s launched in February.
The listing “paves the way for the eventual approval of SOL ETFs,” Chung told Cointelegraph.
Chung said he expects the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve asset managers VanEck and Canary Capital’s proposed spot Solana ETFs as soon as May.
The existence of regulated Solana futures “signals to regulators that Solana is maturing as an asset, making it easier for them to greenlight additional financial products of similar risk and type,” Chung said.
Futures contracts are standardized agreements to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date. They play a crucial supporting role for spot cryptocurrency ETFs because regulated futures markets provide a stable benchmark for measuring a digital asset’s performance.
CME already lists futures contracts for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). US regulators approved ETFs for both of those cryptocurrencies last year.
CME already lists crypto futures, including Bitcoin contracts. Source: CME
Related: CME Group reports record crypto volumes for Q4
Beyond memecoins
Additionally, Solana futures and ETFs will help expand Solana’s growth story beyond memecoins, which were central to the blockchain network’s success in 2024, Chung said.
These products “will bring more serious, sticky capital and pave the way for the development of other real-world use cases, such as payments and remittances,” according to Chung.
Those use cases are “[f]ar more boring than memecoins, perhaps, but a reliable source of long-term revenue that will buoy Solana’s price in the next bear market.”
Memecoin trading, largely tied to the popular Pump.fun platform, comprises roughly 80% of the Solana blockchain network’s revenues, according to asset manager VanEck.
However, activity on the Solana network declined in February after a series of memecoin-related scandals soured sentiment among retail traders.
Solana vs. Ethereum price chart. Source: TradingView
Rivaling Ethereum
Still, cryptocurrency trading volumes on Solana continue to rival those of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, including its layer-2 scaling chains, VanEck said on March 6.
Chung said he expects Solana ETFs to take off among retail investors, partly because of the challenges facing rival smart contract platform Ethereum.
Solana’s native SOL token has performed about twice as well as Ether since early 2024, according to TradingView.
Ethereum’s spot price has struggled since March 2024, when the network’s Dencun upgrade cut transaction fees by approximately 95%.
“With the extremely weak price action we’re seeing in ETH, Solana is now the only option for retail investors wanting to get exposure to crypto beyond Bitcoin, but not willing to go full degen,” Chung said.
Bloomberg Intelligence has set the odds of the SEC approving spot Solana and Litecoin ETFs at 70%.
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