Spout Raises $2M for 0% Interest Loans on Tokenized US Stocks, Funded by Covered Calls

Spout, a lending protocol built on Solana, announced a $2 million strategic round on 15 October 2026 to offer 0% interest loans against tokenized US stocks. Borrowers lock tokenized shares and borrow USDC worth up to half their value, and pay no interest for as long as the loan stays open. Lenders are paid instead from options premium, because Spout writes far-out-of-the-money covered calls on the pledged shares every week, according to the company's GlobeNewswire release. Spout is not live yet. Its beta runs on Solana devnet, and the release says a private beta "will launch soon".

Spout's $2M round: Anchorage Digital, Flow Traders and Solana Labs' co-founders

The Spout release lists Draper Dragon, Anchorage Digital, Flow Traders, Taisu Ventures, Vessel Capital, Solayer LP-SOLAYER$137.66+2.8%, 2Square Capital, Bering Waters Ventures and Blockstreet Capital as participants, with "strategic backing from Solana Labs". It names no lead investor and gives no valuation.

Several of the angels are Solana insiders. Spout says the list includes Solana Labs co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, Injective CEO Eric Chen, Superstate co-founder Dean Swennumson and Perena founder Anna Yuan, alongside J. Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who also advises Spout on regulation and policy. KuCoin's news flash on 16 October carried the same core names, including Yakovenko (as "Toly") and Giancarlo.

Spout's pitch is aimed at the cost of a margin loan. Its release says Charles Schwab and Fidelity charge individual investors 12.075% a year on margin balances under $25,000, against an effective federal funds rate of 3.88%. Marc Ryan, Spout's co-founder and CEO, said in the release that borrowing against a portfolio has been a product for people who already had a private banker, and that it should not be.

How Spout's 0% interest loans against tokenized stocks work

Spout lends USDC at a flat 50% loan-to-value ratio on every asset it accepts. Spout's collateral docs list 11 launch assets: AAPL, NVDA, GOOG, SMCI, MSTR, PFE, GS and XOM shares, plus the IBIT bitcoin fund, the BSOL Solana fund and the GLD gold fund. Pledge $10,000 of tokenized Apple and you can borrow up to $5,000.

The collateral is Spout's own token. According to Spout's security and compliance page, these "spAssets" are issued by Spout Finance Inc., a company registered with FinCEN as a money services business, and each is "backed 1:1 by shares custodied at a regulated US broker". Spout does not name the broker. Each spAsset uses Solana's Token-2022 standard with a transfer hook, a rule built into the token itself, that blocks transfers to wallets that have not passed KYC. None of the Spout docs pages we read mention accepting third-party tokenized stocks such as xStocks.

The yield comes from covered calls. Each week Spout sells someone the right to buy the pledged shares at a set price well above the current one. The buyer pays a fee up front, the premium, and that premium funds the lenders. In effect, the borrower rents out any gains above a ceiling, one week at a time, in exchange for the free loan.

Who pays for 0%: Spout borrowers give up upside, junior lenders take first loss

Spout's borrowers carry the first cost. If a stock rises past the strike price by the end of a weekly cycle, the shares are sold at the strike, the proceeds repay the loan, and the rest goes back to the borrower, according to Spout's options assignment page. Auto-roll, on by default, uses that remainder to buy the asset back for the next cycle. Spout's borrower guide puts the limit this way: "the most assignment can do is cap your upside at the strike for that one cycle." On a week when a stock jumps on earnings, that cap is the price of the 0% rate.

Falling prices carry their own risk. When a position's health factor, a gauge of how well the collateral covers the loan, drops below 1.00, Spout sells part of the collateral to restore it, charging a fee of "roughly 4% on the steadiest collateral to about 12.5% on the most volatile", per Spout's liquidation docs.

Spout's lenders split into two tranches. Spout's tranche docs say the Senior tranche, 85% of the pool, targets roughly 9% net APY, and the Junior tranche, 15% of the pool, targets roughly 32% in normal conditions. A 20% protocol fee comes off gross premium first, and part of it builds an insurance fund with a target of 2% of pool value. Losses beyond that fund hit Junior lenders before Senior ones. Both yields are targets that depend on how much buyers pay for the calls each week, and Spout's security and compliance page does not mention an audit.

Spout on Solana devnet: no mainnet date for its tokenized stock lending

Spout "is not yet on Mainnet", the release says, and it gives no launch date. The company plans to spend the money on hiring and on a "credit layer" that issuers, exchanges and wallets can plug into instead of building their own lending.

That pitch lands in a concentrated market. In August, Kamino Finance KMNO$0.039+18.6% held 82.6% of Solana's tokenized stock lending market, and new issuers keep arriving, with Securitize Stocks launching on Solana on 8 October. Kamino Finance's lending markets charge borrowers interest. Spout moves the borrower's cost into the options market, and it leans on Solana's Token-2022 transfer hooks to keep KYC rules attached to every spAsset it issues.