Solmate Infrastructure Partners With Kraken Institutional to Stake SOL Without Moving Assets Out of Custody

Solmate Solmate Infrastructure (NASDAQ: SLMT) selected Kraken Kraken Institutional on July 30 to support its Solana validator operations under a commercial agreement that lets the company earn SOL SOL staking rewards while the assets remain in Kraken Institutional's qualified custody throughout.

The arrangement targets a persistent friction in institutional digital asset management: to participate in native validator staking, holders have typically needed to move assets in ways that conflict with standard qualified custody requirements. Under the Solmate-Kraken deal, the SOL does not leave Kraken Institutional's qualified custody solution at any point. Staking rewards still accrue through Solmate's Solana validator infrastructure, increasing the company's participation in revenue generated from those operations.

How SOL Stays in Custody While Earning Staking Rewards

Kraken Institutional will provide both custody and validator infrastructure services for Solmate's SOL holdings under the commercial agreement. Lincoln Bartlett, Head of OTC Sales at Kraken Institutional, described the arrangement in the press release as pairing Kraken's qualified custody solution with validator infrastructure so Solmate can earn staking rewards without moving its assets out of custody.

The deal is structured to increase Solmate's participation in value generated by its Solana validator operations. The company says the arrangement is designed to maximize long-term recurring revenue potential while strengthening its scalable digital infrastructure business model.

Kraken Financial: The Wyoming SPDI Structure

In the United States, qualified custody under the Kraken Institutional arrangement is delivered through Kraken Financial, a special purpose depository institution chartered in Wyoming and supervised by the Wyoming Division of Banking. Wyoming's SPDI framework was designed specifically for digital asset companies and gives Kraken Financial a banking-grade regulatory standing that satisfies the custodian requirements institutional allocators typically face.

Kraken Institutional's broader offering spans prime brokerage, OTC trading and financing, qualified custody, institutional staking, listed and OTC derivatives, and access to professionally managed strategies. Combining validator infrastructure with that custody infrastructure in a single counterparty arrangement is the specific mechanic Solmate is using to address the staking participation constraint.

Solmate's Validator Model and Revenue Targets

Solmate describes its strategy as an Infrastructure Flywheel: it raises capital through at-the-market stock offerings, deploys that capital into bare-metal Solana validators, and purchases SOL at discounted rates through agreements with the Solana Foundation. The Abu Dhabi operation includes what the company describes as the UAE's first performant Solana validator.

Solmate targets a blended annual return of 11% or above for shareholders, per the company's stated model, combining staking yield from the SOL treasury with infrastructure revenue from validator operations. Improving the staking component's economics is what the Kraken arrangement directly addresses.

The company's investor base spans the Solana Foundation, ARK Invest, Pulsar Group, and RockawayX; the Foundation holds two Solmate board seats per company disclosures. A $300 million PIPE round closed in October 2025 with participation across those investors, and Solmate separately purchased $50 million in SOL at a discount through its Solana Foundation arrangement, according to The Block's reporting. An acquisition of RockawayX in an all-stock deal is also in progress.

SLMT After the June 2026 CEO Exit: Stock, Strategy, and Open Questions

The Kraken partnership comes as Solmate continues rebuilding following a disruptive stretch in June 2026, when the prior CEO departed and several board members resigned amid the market's reaction to the Solana treasury pivot. Ron Sade was subsequently named CEO. The Kraken deal is the most significant institutional-facing partnership the company has disclosed since that transition.

SLMT shares rose on the day of the announcement. The stock remains well below its 2025 highs but has moved higher as the company has stabilized its leadership team and continued announcing validator and custody partnerships.

Solmate's model parallels the treasury accumulation approach Strategy applied to Bitcoin, adapted for Solana with an operating infrastructure layer that generates recurring validator revenue on top of the underlying SOL position. The custody-staking arrangement with Kraken addresses a structural constraint that had complicated the institutional SOL staking thesis: that earning on-chain rewards typically requires accepting custody arrangements outside standard fiduciary requirements.

Whether Solmate can sustain its 11%+ return target as the company scales, and whether the infrastructure revenue layer holds up, remain open questions. The Kraken deal adds a regulated custody footing to the staking side of the model.