Formation Securities has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to run a tokenized securities venue on Solana. Tokenized shares of Exodus Movement (EXOD), Forward Industries (FWDI) and Galaxy Digital (GLXY) are expected to trade there when it opens in early 2027, according to the company's 9 November press release. The venue will run on trading technology licensed from Orca ORCA$1.39+13.8%, the Solana automated market maker (AMM).
The filing is a notice under the SEC's Innovation Exemption, the conditional relief the agency issued in September that lets tokenized versions of exchange-listed US stocks trade on public blockchains. It is not an SEC approval of Formation Securities, and no trading has started. Formation Securities calls it the first such venue on Solana.
What Formation Securities told the SEC on 9 November
Formation Securities "notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to operate a tokenized securities venue (TSV) on Solana," the New York-datelined release says, and has published its public notice on its own website. Formation's official account posted the same announcement at 12:35 UTC and said the company is seeking issuer consent for listings.
Three listed companies are named as launch issuers: Exodus Movement (NYSE: EXOD), Forward Industries (Nasdaq: FWDI) and Galaxy Digital (Nasdaq: GLXY). Forward Industries confirmed its part from its own account, writing that it is "proud to be working with @formation_so and their partners to make $FWDI tradable on the first tokenized securities venue on Solana."
Christopher Montagano, who leads the venue as president, framed the launch around issuers rather than traders, saying in the release that tokenized stocks "will succeed only if public companies see the value in them."
How tokenized stocks would trade in permissioned Orca AMM pools
Trading on the Formation Securities venue will happen in permissioned AMM liquidity pools, open 24/7, with each trade settling atomically on Solana and access limited to verified participants, the release says. An AMM is a pool of two assets that prices trades by formula instead of matching buyers and sellers in an order book, the model Orca has run on Solana since 2021. "Permissioned" means only approved wallets can trade in those pools, even though every trade is recorded on a public, permissionless ledger.
Settling atomically means the shares and the payment change hands in the same transaction or not at all, so there is no gap in which one side has delivered and the other has not. Holders of the tokenized stock keep the same voting and dividend rights as other shareholders, and the company's transfer agent continues to keep the official shareholder register, according to the release.
The shares themselves come from two tokenization partners, Securitize and Superstate. Securitize supplies what it calls Convertible Entitlement Tokens. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said in the release that each one "is backed by a real share held by our broker-dealer, carries the same rights as that share, and is held only by verified investors." Securitize already runs Securitize Stocks on Solana, which reached 25 US equities on 2 November. Superstate co-founder and CEO Robert Leshner said the Innovation Exemption means "the companies we work with can have their shares trade onchain, around the clock, on Formation Securities."
On the technology, Formation Securities leans on Orca's record. Users have traded more than $550 billion through Orca's AMM software as of 31 October 2026, and the code has been formally verified by Certora and audited 11 times by four other firms, the company says. Montagano repeated those figures in his own post and described the venue as "building on Orca's AMM."
SEC Innovation Exemption rules: symbol caps, issuer notice and stablecoin pairs
The SEC issued the Innovation Exemption on 17 September 2026, as we reported at the time. The relief runs for five years, to 17 September 2031, and covers venues that use permissioned AMM pools. The SEC release lists the main conditions: tokenized stock must give holders the same rights as the traditional share, venues must notify issuers of third-party tokenizations and let them object, smart contracts must be public, auditable and on a permissionless ledger, and trading must halt whenever the primary listing exchange halts.
Jones Day's summary of the order fills in the detail that matters most for a new venue's size:
- A first tier allows 75 symbols and 0.25% of each stock's prior-month average daily share volume, and a second tier 250 symbols and 2.5%.
- Breaching a volume threshold for the first time pauses that stock for three months, and breaching the symbol cap forfeits the exemption.
- Tokenized stock can be paired only with another tokenized stock, a payment stablecoin from a permitted issuer, or a tokenized money market fund.
- Venues cannot lend, extend credit to buy tokenized stock, or allow hypothecation.
- Trading in a stock cannot start until at least 30 calendar days after its issuer receives notice.
Those caps mean the venue starts as a small slice of each stock's trading by design. They also explain why Formation Securities is courting issuers before listing their shares: the exemption gives every company a formal window to say no.
From Project Open to a tokenized securities venue
Formation Securities' route to the SEC began more than 18 months ago. In his post, Montagano wrote that the Solana Foundation and Solana Policy Institute asked him to have Orca represent the DeFi stack in a proposed framework for trading tokenized stocks on a public, permissionless blockchain. That became Project Open, a coalition including Orca, Superstate and the Solana Policy Institute that was submitted to the SEC's Crypto Task Force in April 2025, according to the release. When the exemption arrived, Montagano wrote, "it reflected much of what we proposed, including AMM trading on a public, permissionless blockchain." The Solana Policy Institute has since asked the SEC to define "permissionless" ledgers by who controls validators.
Montagano calls Formation Securities "newly created." In October, Orca and Loopscale merged under the Formation name, with Montagano as chief strategy and legal officer, and Decrypt reported that Formation planned to operate a tokenized securities venue. Formation's own account announced the SEC notice and describes Formation Securities as "a new business that's licensing trading technology from @orca_so."
Montagano was direct about who the venue is up against. Replying to a well-wisher on X, he wrote that the next step is "going head-to-head with incumbents like NYSE and Nasdaq on actual NMS stock to prove Internet Capital Markets on Solana are truly competitive on spreads, speed and cost."
Distribution and custody partners: Jito's JTX, Solflare, Squads, Anchorage and BitGo
Traders will reach the venue through other companies' apps and custody. Formation's announcement thread lists Alpaca, Jito JTO$0.340+2.2%'s JTX, Passage by CoinList, Solflare and Squads on distribution, with Anchorage Digital Bank, BitGo and Fireblocks as custodians. Predicate, Sec3, Solidus Labs and TRM Labs provide security and risk-management support.
JTX, which opened equities trading on Solana on 5 November, said it will bring the shares to Solana "with voting, dividends, and other shareholder rights intact." That puts Formation Securities a layer below the stock apps that have launched on Solana in recent weeks, including Solana Labs' Leap and Sunrise's tokenized SPY listing. Those are places to buy tokenized stock. Formation Securities intends to operate the market where some of it trades under the SEC exemption, and apps like JTX are signed up to route users into it.
Forward Industries' stock already has a Solana token: a FWDI version issued by Backpack Securities, which has traded on Solana DEXs since September. The Formation listing would be a separate token supplied by Securitize or Superstate, traded on a venue operating under the SEC exemption, with Forward named as a participating issuer.
What to watch before tokenized EXOD, FWDI and GLXY trading starts in early 2027
The early-2027 start is a target. Before it, each listing goes through the exemption's 30-day issuer notice window, and Formation says it is seeking issuer consent for its listings, so the roster beyond Exodus, Forward and Galaxy depends on which other companies agree. The tiered caps will set how much of any stock can trade on the venue, and the permissioned pools will need enough liquidity to quote tight prices at weekends and overnight, when the primary exchanges are closed. The SEC has also asked for public comment on the exemption, so its terms could change.
Formation Securities says it chose Solana for its reliability, speed, low cost and record with tokenized assets. Transactions settle in seconds for a fraction of a cent, which makes frequent small trades practical, and Solana's token infrastructure supports the permissioning and transfer restrictions a regulated venue needs to control which wallets can hold a security, the release says. It also puts tokenized real-world assets on Solana at more than $5 billion.
