Backpack

Backpack is a self-custodial crypto wallet and fully regulated global exchange that originated on Solana, integrating wallet management, spot and perpetual futures trading, and tokenized U.S. equity investing under one interface. It is one of the few crypto platforms to have obtained multiple regulatory licenses across jurisdictions while keeping a non-custodial wallet at its center.

Background and Founding

Backpack was founded in 2022 by Armani Ferrante and Tristan Yver, engineers who had built Anchor — Solana's primary smart contract framework — before working at FTX and Alameda Research. The company launched under Coral with a $20 million raise co-led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Anagram, K5 Global, and Frictionless.

The FTX collapse in November 2022 nearly ended Backpack before it launched. The firm lost $14.5 million — roughly 88% of its operating capital — overnight. Ferrante and Yver decided to rebuild rather than wind down. That decision shaped what Backpack became: a team that understood institutional failures firsthand and prioritized regulatory standing and proof of reserves from the outset.

xNFT Technology and the Mad Lads Launch

Backpack's original concept was the xNFT — an executable NFT that runs as a mini-application directly inside the wallet rather than linking to an external website. xNFTs are programmable digital assets that combine the collectibility of NFTs with the functional capabilities of apps, letting users interact with protocols within a sandboxed, wallet-native environment. The wallet was designed as a platform where xNFTs could become a new primitive for on-chain distribution of software.

To demonstrate the concept and rebuild after FTX's collapse, Backpack released Mad Lads in April 2023: a 10,000-piece NFT collection (9,000 Lads and 1,000 Lassies) minted on Solana with over 8,000 participants in the two-day launch. Mad Lads topped NFT charts across all blockchains on release and became Solana's number-one collection by market capitalization and trading volume. The collection remains a flagship community within the Solana NFT ecosystem, with over 3,000 current holders.

The Backpack Exchange

Backpack Exchange entered beta in November 2023 after securing a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) — one of the stricter licensing regimes in the crypto space. The exchange offers spot markets, perpetual futures with up to 50x leverage, lending, and yield on collateral within a unified portfolio.

A key design decision: the Backpack wallet and the Backpack Exchange share the same account and authentication. Moving funds between self-custody and the order book is an internal transfer rather than a deposit, removing the typical withdraw-and-deposit cycle.

In February 2024 the company raised $120 million in a Series A led by Placeholder VC, with additional participation from Hashed, Amber Group, Wintermute, Robot Ventures, Delphi Digital, and Selini. The round allowed Backpack to hire from Citi, Stripe, State Street, and Coinbase.

Backpack expanded into Japan in December 2024, earning Type 2 membership with the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association — the first new member admitted since Binance joined in 2022. By that point the exchange had over 650,000 fully KYC-verified users, with particularly strong penetration in the Asia-Pacific region.

In January 2025 Backpack acquired FTX EU for $32.7 million, inheriting its Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) license issued by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. This made Backpack the only regulated provider of perpetual futures in the European Union at the time of acquisition.

By mid-2026, the exchange had processed over $400 billion in cumulative trading volume and reached 100,000 monthly active users.

Backpack Securities: Tokenized Equities on Solana

Backpack's most significant product expansion is Backpack Securities, which integrates traditional U.S. stock ownership with on-chain tokenization via Solana as the settlement layer.

In October 2025, Backpack partnered with Superstate — founded by Compound protocol creator Robert Leshner — to become the first centralized exchange to natively list SEC-registered U.S. equities on-chain, using real securities with standard CUSIP identifiers. This was followed in 2026 by a broader Backpack Securities rollout through a partnership with Sunrise, enabling users to purchase actual U.S. stocks and ETFs through regulated brokerage infrastructure and then convert those entitlements into tokenized securities that move on-chain across compatible wallets and networks.

The tokenized securities are backed by standard brokerage and custody infrastructure, settle via ACATS and DTCC rails, and include cash dividends and corporate actions. Users can reverse the conversion at any time, returning tokenized holdings to traditional stock entitlements.

As of September 2026, tokenized stock and ETF holdings can be used as collateral within the Backpack portfolio — borrowing USD, trading spot on margin, and hedging with perpetual futures against positions held in the same account. Backpack describes this as cross-asset portfolio margining: a single brokerage account where crypto balances, stock entitlements, and perpetual positions share the same margin pool.

Wallet: Multi-Chain and Self-Custodial

The Backpack wallet supports 14 blockchain networks under a single seed phrase, including Solana (primary), Ethereum, Bitcoin, Sui, Monad, Polygon, Base, and Arc. Wallet-side features include hardware wallet integration, real-time scam protection, NFT locking, native token staking, and a swap aggregator that sources rates across supported chains. The wallet is available as a Chrome browser extension and as iOS and Android apps.

Backpack added support for Arc Mainnet at launch in September 2026, providing immediate wallet and DeFi access to the Arc ecosystem on day one.

Regulatory Standing

Backpack holds regulatory authorizations in three major jurisdictions: VARA VASP license (Dubai), MiFID II license via Cyprus SEC (European Union, inherited through the FTX EU acquisition), and Type 2 JVCEA membership (Japan). The exchange publishes daily on-chain proof of reserves, a direct response to the opacity that surrounded FTX.

Solana Ecosystem Role

Backpack is among the most significant infrastructure projects native to Solana. The Anchor framework built by its founders underlies most Solana DeFi protocol code. Mad Lads established the xNFT standard and remains one of Solana's cultural anchor collections. The exchange's choice to use Solana as the settlement layer for tokenized equities represents a meaningful institutional endorsement of the chain's throughput and finality characteristics for regulated financial products.

Backpack sits at the intersection of self-custody and regulated finance in a way few other platforms do: a non-custodial wallet connected to a licensed exchange that trades crypto, derivatives, and real U.S. equities — all settled in part on Solana.