The impending launch of Solana (SOL) futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a prominent derivatives exchange in the US, indicates that the first US SOL exchange-traded fund (ETF) listings are on the horizon, according to Chris Chung, founder of the Solana-based swap platform Titan.
Scheduled for March 17, CME will introduce SOL futures contracts, marking them as one of the early regulated Solana futures to enter the US market following Coinbase’s introduction in February.
This listing “opens the door for the eventual approval of SOL ETFs,” Chung stated.
He believes that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could give the green light to asset managers VanEck and Canary Capital’s proposed spot Solana ETFs as early as May.
The presence of regulated Solana futures “indicates to regulators that Solana is evolving as an asset, facilitating their approval of similar financial products,” Chung added.
Futures contracts are standardized agreements to buy or sell an underlying asset at a specified date in the future. They serve an essential role for spot cryptocurrency ETFs since regulated futures markets offer a stable benchmark for assessing a digital asset’s performance.
CME currently has futures contracts available for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), and US regulators approved ETFs for both cryptocurrencies last year.
CME already offers crypto futures, including Bitcoin contracts.
Related: CME Group reports record crypto volumes for Q4
Beyond memecoins
Moreover, the introduction of Solana futures and ETFs is expected to broaden Solana’s growth narrative beyond memecoins, which were pivotal to the blockchain’s success in 2024, according to Chung.
These offerings “will attract more serious, committed capital and create opportunities for developing practical use cases, like payments and remittances,” Chung explained.
Although these use cases may seem “[f]ar more mundane than memecoins, they represent a dependable source of long-term revenue that can support Solana’s value during the next market downturn.”
According to asset manager VanEck, meme coin trading, largely connected to the popular Pump.fun platform, constitutes approximately 80% of Solana’s blockchain revenue.
However, activity on the Solana network saw a downturn in February after several memecoin-related controversies dampened sentiment among retail traders.
Solana vs. Ethereum price chart.
Rivaling Ethereum
Nevertheless, cryptocurrency trading volumes on Solana remain competitive with the entire Ethereum ecosystem, including its layer-2 scaling solutions, as noted by VanEck on March 6.
Chung anticipates that Solana ETFs will capture the interest of retail investors, partially due to the challenges confronting the competing smart contract platform Ethereum.
The performance of Solana’s native SOL token has been approximately twice that of Ether since early 2024, according to TradingView.
Ethereum’s spot price has faced difficulties since March 2024, when the network’s Dencun upgrade reduced transaction fees by about 95%.
“Given the notably weak price performance of ETH, Solana is now the only option for retail investors seeking crypto exposure beyond Bitcoin without fully diving into high-risk investments,” Chung remarked.
Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated a 70% chance that the SEC will approve spot Solana and Litecoin ETFs.
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