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Good Morning,
Solana spent its last cycle building the fastest rails for memecoin speculation, and now the company behind the network wants to own the retail front door itself, betting that the next wave of users will trade stocks and macro with conviction rather than chase the next ticker.
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In Today’s Email:
**What Matters:Solana Labs Launches Leap Trading App 👀Founders Highlight:Chris Osborn of Leap 👨Deal Flows:**Uranium Digital Raises $16.5M Series A 💰️
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WHAT MATTERS
**State of play: **Solana Labs launched 𝕏Leap, a mobile trading app built by the acquired Dialect team that pitches discipline over memecoin volume, a notable pivot for an ecosystem whose retail growth has been driven largely by fast speculative trading.
Leap offers tokenized stocks, ETFs, metals, currencies and crypto 24/7, though tokenized equities are unavailable to US persons and the app is blocked in the UK.
Each trade executes as an onchain swap routed through Jupiter, with Helius handling infrastructure and Birdeye supplying market data.
A curated Home tab marks breaking stories on price charts, while PnL tracking includes deposits, withdrawals and fees to show a true breakeven per position.
Leap charges no fees at launch, but plans to use future fees to buy and burn SOL and fund referral rewards.
Early Founders Club members are expected to earn 30% of fees from direct referrals and 5% from second-tier invites once fees go live.
**Why it matters: **Solana Labs is moving from infrastructure builder to direct competitor for retail flow, putting it up against the apps that run on its own network.
**Our take: **A “discipline over volume” pitch sits awkwardly next to a two-tier referral scheme that pays out more the more invitees trade, and a SOL burn that makes Leap’s success a token price story too.
**For builders and investors: **Watch the fee level once it goes live, and whether wallets and trading apps like Phantom start treating Solana Labs as a rival rather than a partner.
BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT
**Intro: **Chris Osborn is a crypto pioneer and tech founder renowned for building infrastructure at the intersection of consumer social and high-performance Web3 trading tools, and the founder of Leap.
**Previous background: **Chris spent years engineering cutting-edge blockchain messaging protocols, decentralized applications, and high-engagement consumer products.
He began his prominent crypto chapter by founding Dialect Labs, building the core messaging rails and actions for the Solana ecosystem.
He famously engineered “Blinks” and the cashtags feature on X (formerly Twitter), before Dialect was acquired by Solana Labs in 2026.
**The big idea: **Chris through Leap aims to make global equity markets and tokenized RWA universally accessible by packaging institutional-grade trading into a high-performance, mobile-first consumer application.
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INSIGHTS
Bitcoin’s post-midterm bounce lasted barely a day, as a Wall Street rout in tech and AI stocks dragged crypto back down and showed how little the vote changed a macro backdrop still shaped by inflation, Middle East escalation and a strong US economy.
BTC fell 6% to $75,700 and ETH dropped more than 7% to $2,247, reversing Wednesday’s climb back above $80K.
The Nasdaq slid 4.7% and the VIX jumped about 60%, while miners Bitdeer and Keel Infrastructure fell roughly 20% and Strategy and Coinbase lost about 10%.
Liquidations hit nearly $1.1B across 211,000 traders in 24 hours, with $818.9M in longs wiped out in a single four-hour window, per CoinGlass.
Wintermute said the rally rested on fleeting catalysts like Binance hack relief and falling oil, and flagged $73K and $68K as the next levels to watch.
A stronger Democratic position in Congress could force bipartisan deals on crypto bills, leaving the Clarity Act uncertain until the next election cycle.
DEAL FLOWS
*Deal flows slowed down this week - we saw $160M in deals 💼 *
Blockchain Capital led a𝕏 $16.5M Series A into Uranium Digital, a sizable follow-on bet that tokenized commodity rails can win institutional flow in a uranium market still running on broker calls and weeks-long settlement.
Framework Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Portal Ventures, Knollwood Investment Advisory and Christian Angermayer joined the round, which closed last month.
The raise follows a $6.1M seed in 2025, bringing total disclosed funding to $22.6M, though the company declined to share its valuation.
At $16.5M, the round ranks in the top third of comparable raises, signaling strong conviction in onchain commodity infrastructure.
Funds will go toward expanding products and technology for its Solana-based platform, which tokenizes yellowcake backed one pound per token.
The pitch targets AI-driven nuclear demand, with single-pound units lowering a spot market minimum that typically runs $7M to $8M per trade.
Deal flows in the past week:
CRSHMARKET, $3.5M Seed Round
Bloqueo, $3.67M Seed Round
Lombard Systems, $4M Pre-Seed & Seed Round
LO:TECH, $12M Series A Round
Uranium Digital, $16.5M Series A Round
Soter Insure, Undisclosed $ Series B Round
Unruggable, $500K Strategic Round
StableStock, $75M Strategic Round
CRYMBO, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round
Scallop, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round
PropHub, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round
Phase, $45M Founder Funding Round
Revolut, Undisclosed $ Secondary Share Sale
Rates Exchange, Undisclosed $ Unknown Round
QUICK BITES
BasedeploysDenim upgrade on mainnet.IREN’s bitcoin mining revenuedrops58%.Standard Chartered and SBIbackcrypto insurer Soter.Payward and its clientsbuyAAVE tokens in DeFi investment push.BTCerasespost-election gains as selloff triggers over $1B liquidations.Samsung WalletlaunchesUSDC accounts on Solana for US Galaxy users.HKpasseslaw requiring exchanges to report customer txs to tax authorities.Anchorage DigitalseeksCFTC swap dealer registration for options business.
NOTEWORTHY READS & MEME
Pantera’s𝕏readon Investing in Fission.JG’s𝕏readon How I Find Founders First.Category Labs’s𝕏readon A Private RPC for Public Blockchains.
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