Solstice Labs bets on ‘one-click yield’ to bring institutional finance to everyone

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Traditionally, if you wanted even a peek at the investment strategies that deep-pocketed banks and funds have access to, you’d either need to be one of the institutions, or have a family office that managed your millions for you. 

But now that’s changing. As crypto regulation gains clarity, we’re now seeing platforms lower that barrier to entry for retail users via cryptocurrency rails, permissionless DeFi and stablecoins, allowing anyone to go online and access yield opportunities. 

The narrative in crypto has always been either bring assets over to crypto and try to get institutional rails developed, or increase the scale of retail-based products to that institutional level from the crypto side, Ben Nadareski, co-founder and CEO of Solstice Labs, said on Talking Tokens podcast recently. 

“We’re sitting right at the cusp — in the middle of DeFi and centralized finance.” 

Solstice seems intent on walking that tightrope. The company launched its key products, USX a Solana-native stablecoin and YieldVault, a delta-neutral yield platform, at the end of September 2025. And it’s seen traction:  its total value locked (TVL) has surged to over $300 million across more than 130,000 monthly active users, Nadareski said. 

“One-click yield is the easiest way to think about it,” Nadareski said. 

Solstice’s YieldVault operates on a delta-neutral strategy, which means it doesn’t take market directional bets. “So we don't care if, for example, Apple's price goes up or down. It wouldn't matter to us in the strategy,” he added. “We care about the arbitrage opportunity that exists. It's a naturally reoccurring dynamic in the market that we extract for yield.”

The company counts both institutional and retail investors as clients, and these range from some of the largest institutional funds in the world to everyday users. 

All these groups are “accessing the same level of yield [on Solstice] with no difference,” Nadareski stated. “There's no backroom deals.” This means someone who has $5 onchain is going to get the same access as a $50 million investor. 

This makes it more equitable across the board: institutions are interested in the platform because it gives them a level of access that wasn’t traditionally possible in the DeFi world, as well as a level of enterprise-grade production that they would normally get through a traditional fund allocation, but through DeFi now, Nadareski explained. 

Going forward, the opportunity seems to lie in new entrants’ hands as well as everyday users, Nadareski said, as there’s a massive education gap and interest emerging from new investors who have never touched crypto before but want to enter it, and he expects this net-new capital to spur a new wave of growth. 

“The biggest shift that we're going to see in the next coming years is when the everyday user starts paying for their groceries, gas and their rent with crypto. At that moment, we're going to see a critical mass shift over to utilizing crypto on a widespread basis.” 

A lot of attention is currently focused on the financial assets, infrastructure or markets that everybody's pushing in crypto. But once it starts going into the social and day-to-day aspects of everyday lives, it’s going to “hit at the mass level,” Nadareski said.

“We’re getting very close to that point.”

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

For today’s episode, I interviewed Ben Nadareski, Co-Founder and CEO of Solstice Labs, to break down how Solstice brings institutional-grade delta-neutral trading strategies to everyday users through a permissionless, onchain structure. Ben explains how Solstice can give a $5 retail depositor access to the exact same real yield that hedge funds, trading firms, and major institutions receive with no backroom deals, no preferential terms, and fully transparent onchain proof of reserves.

We discuss how Solstice scales yield to billions through delta-neutral funding-rate arbitrage, why its strategy is sustainable in crypto but nearly erased in traditional markets, and how liquid staking-style receipt tokens unlock collateral efficiency across Solana. Ben also shares why their TVL scaled overto $3030M in just three months, how institutions are entering crypto through Solstice, and why full transparency is the only way to rebuild trust after years of opaque DeFi yields.

The conversation also explores the Solstice token launch, building a non-VC-backed cap table, why Solana’s culture and composability made it the only viable chain, and how Ben’s background in physics and derivatives trading shapes the way he thinks about market structure, risk, capital efficiency, and the long-term path to crypto adoption.

This episode is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. Check out the accompanying newsletter on www.token-relations.xyz

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Please note this content is for informational and educational purposes only. Any views shared should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research. We may have a direct or indirect financial interest in content mentioned in this newsletter.