Pye Finance Secures $5 Million to Launch Solana Staking Marketplace
Pye Finance has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures, with participation from Solana Labs, Nascent, Gemini, and others. The funding aims to support Pye's development of an active yield market for SOL staking positions.
The company seeks to create bond markets for Solana validators and stakers that facilitate validator stake retention and rewards distribution across more than 1,000 validators. This is enabled through transferable, time-locked staking positions with transparent reward sharing.
Staking positions on Pye are split into two tokens, Principal Token and Rewards Token, which can be traded on secondary markets. This structure unlocks potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications such as lending, restaking, and fixed-yield products, thereby increasing liquidity and utility of the approximately $60 billion currently locked in Solana staking.
Variant investor Alana Levin highlighted that the marketplace could fundamentally change Solana staking by aligning preferences of validators and stakers, offering higher yields through longer lockups. Erik Ashdown remarked that validators represent an underbanked segment within Web3, and Pye aims to upgrade Solana's native staking accounts into structured, tradable asset classes.
Solana Foundation Executive Director Dan Albert noted that tradeable, fixed-term positions could enhance rewards discovery and capital efficiency within proof-of-stake networks.
Pye Finance has completed a closed alpha and plans to launch a private beta in the first quarter of 2026, granting early access to validators and staking providers.
Currently, around 422.6 million SOL (around $59 billion) is staked, with challenges around liquidity and customization under the Solana Foundation Delegated Proof-of-Stake model and a general demand among validators for improved revenue opportunities.
