Solayer

Solayer is a crypto project that began in 2024 as a restaking protocol on Solana and now builds its own blockchain, called Solayer Chain or InfiniSVM. The chain runs Solana-style programs on specialised hardware and targets one million transactions per second. Its mainnet is still in an alpha stage, which opened on 11 December 2025.

Solayer also runs four consumer products. sSOL is a liquid staking token for SOL. sUSD is a dollar stablecoin backed by U.S. Treasury Bills. Solayer Pay is a Visa card for spending stablecoins. Margin Trade is an exchange for perpetual futures and spot trading. The LAYER token governs the project.

How Solayer works: the InfiniSVM chain and hardware acceleration

Solayer Chain is its own blockchain, separate from Solana. It runs the same kind of programs as Solana, using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). Its speed comes from hardware: the work is split across a group of machines joined by very fast links. Solayer's docs say the goal is more than one million transactions per second.

The speed Solayer has shown so far is lower. In its mainnet alpha post of 11 December 2025, Solayer said its test network had passed 330,000 transactions per second. The same post told users to "expect occasional downtime" while the team keeps changing how the chain works.

The hardware ideas come from high-speed trading firms. Solayer's docs name two of them, RDMA and InfiniBand. Both let servers read each other's memory directly, which skips most of the usual network delay.

Solayer Chain agrees on blocks in a different way from Solana. Solayer's consensus docs describe one sequencer that orders transactions and proposes blocks. A set of provers then re-runs the work and votes. A block is final once 51% of the vote accepts it.

If you know Solana, this will feel more concentrated. On Solana, many independent validators take turns making blocks. On Solayer Chain, one sequencer leads at a time, with backups that take over if it fails.

You move assets between Solana and Solayer Chain through sBridge, the project's own bridge. The Block reported in January 2026 that SOL pays the gas fees on the alpha mainnet.

Solayer staking and restaking with sSOL

sSOL is Solayer's liquid staking token. You deposit SOL in the Solayer app and receive sSOL, which rises in value against SOL as staking rewards build up. You can hold sSOL, use it in Solana DeFi, or swap it back. The stake sits with Solayer's own Solana validator, which the project calls the Mega Validator.

Solayer's native staking docs say the validator charges 0% commission. They also say it passes all MEV rewards to stakers. MEV rewards are the tips traders pay to have their transactions placed first. The data widgets on this page show the live figures.

Getting out takes time. Solayer's unstaking guide describes a cooldown that lasts until the next Solana epoch, and only then can you withdraw your SOL. The guide still says this can take up to two days, but Solana epochs have run about a day since faster slots arrived in October 2026. The guide lists no instant unstake option. The fast way out is to sell sSOL on a DEX at the market price.

Restaking is what Solayer was first known for. The idea comes from EigenLayer on Ethereum: use staked SOL a second time. Solayer calls its version an endoAVS. You delegate sSOL to a Solana app, and that stake helps the app get its transactions into blocks faster. It works because Solana validators give more network room to connections backed by more stake. Jason Li presented the design for Solayer in a Breakpoint 2024 keynote.

The docs still describe this delegation. They do not name the apps that use it, and they do not publish what delegators earn. Solayer's sSOL overview now calls sSOL "a liquid staking token" first. Treat the extra restaking yield as unproven until Solayer shows those numbers.

Solayer Pay card review: fees, countries and deposits (formerly the Emerald Card)

Solayer Pay is a Visa card that spends stablecoins from your Solayer Pay balance. It works anywhere Visa is accepted, including through Apple Pay and Google Pay. It was first called the Emerald Card and launched in April 2025. Everyone must pass identity checks (KYC) before a card is issued.

Since late October 2026 you can top up from five networks: Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain and Base. Solayer's announcement says you can send USDT on BNB Chain or USDC on Base straight to your balance, with no bridging first.

The Solayer Pay FAQ lists these costs:

Here is what that means in practice. Say you load $100 and spend it all in euros. The top-up and the payment fee together cost you about $2.40, before the yearly fee.

You get a virtual card once KYC clears, which the FAQ says takes three to five business days. A physical card arrived on 27 May 2026. The FAQ says it works at ATMs, where local fees may apply. Another line of the same FAQ still listed ATM and in-store use as "coming soon" when we checked on 1 November 2026.

The card is not open to everyone, and the list of exclusions is long. The FAQ rules out people in 17 U.S. states, among them Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and Washington. Its global list of restricted countries includes the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany and France. Check the full list before you pay the fee.

sUSD: the Treasury-backed yield stablecoin

sUSD is Solayer's dollar stablecoin. It is backed by U.S. Treasury Bills, which are short-term loans to the U.S. government. The interest on those bills is passed to holders. Your sUSD balance grows on its own in your wallet. Solayer's docs point to OpenEden as the partner behind the Treasury Bill product.

Solayer's own pages disagree on the yield. The sUSD docs say about 4-5% a year. The sUSD product page advertised 9.5% when we checked on 1 November 2026, and does not say where the extra comes from. The docs tie the lower figure to Treasury Bills alone. Ask what else is behind any higher number before you rely on it.

You mint sUSD by asking for a quote, as the sUSD FAQ explains. You lock USDC and request sUSD. A liquidity provider takes the USDC and hands wrapped Treasury Bills to the protocol. The protocol then mints your sUSD. To redeem, the same steps run in reverse.

sUSD is not open to everyone. Solayer's eligibility page bars people located in the United States, South Korea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. The product page lists sUSD on Solana, Base and Solayer Chain.

Solayer Margin Trade: perps and spot trading on crypto, commodities and stocks

Margin Trade is Solayer's exchange for perpetual futures, with some spot markets. A perpetual is a contract that tracks a price and never expires. It lets you bet on a price going up or down with borrowed money. Solayer announced Margin Trade on 28 May 2026, and it opened on mainnet in June. It started with crypto markets, gold, silver and oil. It also listed MT500, an index that follows the broad U.S. stock market.

The selling point is one margin account across all of those markets. Margin Trade uses an order book, where buyers and sellers post prices and get matched, as on a stock exchange. Solayer says positions, funding payments, margin updates and liquidations all settle on-chain. Its launch release says the Solayer Labs team behind it includes former traders from Citadel and Kraken. We covered the launch in Solayer Launches Margin Trade.

By October 2026, Margin Trade listed 27 perpetual markets, per a Solayer release. They include BTC, ETH and SOL, crude oil, and single stocks such as Intel.

The same release gives the fees:

PRL is the token of the Pearl network. On 30 June 2026, Margin Trade added PRL spot trading against USDC, next to its PRL perpetual. The Block reported leverage of up to 3x on the PRL market at launch. CoinGecko began tracking Margin Trade's markets in October 2026.

Margin Trade runs on Solana, per Solayer's own releases, even though The Block's launch report also tied it to Solayer Chain. Solayer's public docs still had no Margin Trade section on 1 November 2026, so liquidation rules are not written down there. Check them in the app before you trade.

Who should use Solayer: stakers, card users, traders and builders

Solayer suits four kinds of user, and each comes with a limit.

SOL holders who want a liquid staking token from a zero-commission validator can use sSOL. The constraint is concentration: your stake sits with one validator run by one team, and a normal exit takes until the next epoch, about a day.

Stablecoin holders in eligible countries can hold sUSD for Treasury yield and use Solayer Pay to spend stablecoins by card. The card needs KYC and $20 a year, and foreign spending costs a little over 2% once top-up fees are counted. Many large markets, including the UK, Canada and much of Europe, are on the card's restricted list.

Active traders who want crypto, commodities and stock perps in one account can use Margin Trade. Its fees are low, but it is new and its rules sit in the app rather than in public docs.

Developers who need very fast settlement, such as trading apps, can build on Solayer Chain. Solayer backs this with a $35 million ecosystem fund announced on 20 January 2026. The chain is in alpha, so expect downtime and a small ecosystem.

Solayer is a poor fit if you want the most decentralised place to stake SOL, or if you live in the United States and want sUSD.

Is Solayer legit and safe? Audits, multisig control and risks

Solayer is a real, venture-backed company, but its newer products have no public audit. The audits page shows five reports, all from 2024. OtterSec reviewed the token metadata in April and the restaking program in July. Halborn reviewed the endoAVS program and the pool program in August, and the sUSD program in October. Each report covers that program as it stood in 2024, not later upgrades.

No report is listed for Solayer Chain, the sBridge bridge, Margin Trade or Solayer Pay. Those are the parts of Solayer that have changed most since 2024. The same page promises "two audits per year on all existing contracts", yet it lists nothing newer than October 2024.

Upgrades to the pool manager program, which handles sSOL deposits, are controlled by a multisig, a wallet that needs several people to approve a change. Solayer's multisig page says an upgrade needs three of five signers. Two keys belong to the Solayer core team. The other three are held by Joseph Lallouz of Bison Trails, Michael Repetny of Marinade Finance and Robert Chen of OtterSec. The team cannot push an upgrade alone, but it needs only one outside signer to do so. The docs give no multisig details for the sSOL, endoAVS or sUSD programs.

We found no reported hack or exploit of Solayer's programs as of 1 November 2026. Other risks to weigh:

• Solayer Chain orders transactions through one sequencer at a time, and its mainnet is an alpha that the team says will have downtime.
• sBridge depends on a group of off-chain guardians who sign transfers. The guardian docs give five of seven as an example threshold but do not say how many guardians run in production or who operates them. Per the bridge security page, withdrawals to Solana above a cap are queued with a fixed six-hour delay.
• Solayer Pay's custody model is unclear. The overview page says there are "no centralized custodians", while the security page describes hot and cold wallets with multi-signature controls, which is how a custodian stores funds.
• sUSD depends on a third party's Treasury Bill product and on liquidity providers to redeem it.
• Margin Trade is a leveraged product, and its liquidation rules are not in the public docs.
• LAYER staking on Solayer Chain is not live. The staking docs mark it pre-launch, with the program not yet deployed even on the test network.

Solayer vs Jito restaking, and other staking alternatives

Solayer and Jito both offer restaking on Solana, and they aim at different things. Solayer points restaked SOL at Solana apps that want their transactions to land faster. Jito Restaking is a general toolkit. Its vaults accept any SPL token, and each service sets its own rewards and can set its own slashing terms. Slashing in Jito's restaking layer means losing part of your restaked tokens as a penalty; Solana itself has no slashing. Jito also issues JitoSOL, its own liquid staking token.

Pick by what you want from the token. sSOL is the simpler product: one token, one validator, and staking yield with MEV passed on. Jito's restaking vaults suit you if you want to choose which services your stake secures. You then have to judge the slashing terms of each one.

If you do not want restaking, plain staking is the main alternative. You can delegate SOL to any validator from your own wallet. You can also hold a liquid staking token backed by many validators, and compare stake pools side by side. Solana Compass, which publishes this page, runs its own validator and a liquid staking token called compassSOL. That means we compete with sSOL for stake. You can compare validators by commission and performance or see how we stake SOL before you choose.

LAYER token: supply, unlocks, airdrop and the Buidlpad sale

LAYER is Solayer's governance token. There will never be more than one billion of them. Holders vote on upgrades and on other big decisions for the project. Solayer's tokenomics page lists two more uses as "future": paying gas fees on Solayer Chain, and staking to help run it. So LAYER does not pay for transactions on the chain yet.

The supply is split four ways:

About 22% of the supply was in circulation when LAYER launched in 2025, per the tokenomics page. That included a 12% airdrop to early users and a 3% community sale tied to the card. The sale ran on Buidlpad in January 2025: 30 million LAYER for $10.5 million, fully unlocked at launch, per Buidlpad's announcement. Binance also gave 3% of the supply to its own users through its HODLer Airdrop, per Binance Academy.

The rest unlocks over time on the schedule above. Each unlock adds to the number of tokens that can be sold.

Solayer Labs team, funding and history

Solayer Labs is the company behind Solayer. Rachel Chu is a co-founder. The company raised a $12 million seed round led by Polychain Capital, The Block reported in August 2024. The report described the firm as based in San Francisco.

Hack VC and Race Capital also took part in that round. Anatoly Yakovenko, who co-founded Solana, put money into an earlier pre-seed round. Joshua Sum is chief product officer, as Solayer said when it launched Margin Trade.

Solayer has changed shape fast:

• 2024: it starts as a restaking protocol on Solana.
• January 2025: it sells LAYER on Buidlpad.
• 2025: it launches the LAYER token and the Emerald Card (April), and opens a test network for its own chain.
• December 2025: the Solayer Chain alpha mainnet opens.
• January 2026: it sets up a $35 million fund for apps on the chain.
• May and June 2026: it adds the physical card and Margin Trade.
• October 2026: Solayer Pay accepts deposits from five networks.

One thing to watch is how much Solayer says in public. When we checked on 1 November 2026, the newest post on its blog was still the fund news from 20 January 2026. Product news now comes through press releases and the project's X account.