Solana's Maya Caddle on How SoFi, MoneyGram, and Western Union Are Moving Onchain

Institutions move onchain

Maya Caddle says the Solana Foundation gets a lot of inbound interest from big institutions because of its dominance in crypto native payments. She calls SoFi a company that has heavily committed to its crypto journey, and its first Mint Condition episode covered SoFi USD and the Send network it is rebuilding. According to Caddle, Western Union is using Solana exclusively for its stablecoin and some other activities.

Caddle ties the shift to the GENIUS Act: after it passed, she says, institutions can come onchain in a meaningful way, beyond proofs of concept and design partners.

MoneyGram joins the validators

Zach Fowler pointed out that Moneygram issued its stablecoin on Stellar and shortly after announced a validator on Solana. Caddle says the foundation is excited to have MoneyGram in its validator network and calls this the first of many announcements with the company. MoneyGram is also working with the Solana Developer Platform, which she describes as fundamentally an API to make it as easy as possible for payments companies and institutions to use crypto.

Privacy and yield tools

For institutions that need privacy, Maya Caddle pointed to Contra, which she says lets a company run its own private instance of Solana Mainnet while keeping connectivity to it, and enables confidential transfers. She also cites tokenized money market funds from tier one institutions that earn by the second, something she says does not exist in traditional fiat money.

Beyond the West

Maya Caddle says Solana has never been a Western-only blockchain. The Solana Foundation announced a partnership this week with one of the key banks in Korea and has an agreement with VARA, the UAE's virtual asset regulator. She says big APAC announcements are still to come and that the region is "definitely Solana pilled."