Multicoin Co-founder: Why is SOL the Best Asset for DAT?

Original Title: Creating The World's Leading Solana Treasury Company

Original Author: Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital
Translated by: AIMan, Jinse Finance

On September 11, 2025, I am pleased to announce that Multicoin Capital, Jump Crypto (the largest cryptocurrency trading company), and Galaxy (the largest financial group in the crypto space) have successfully led a $1.65 billion PIPE financing for Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FORD). The company will use the net proceeds to launch a Solana treasury company. Each sponsor has committed to invest over $100 million. Personally, I have invested an additional $25 million on top of Multicoin's commitment because I believe the company has long-term growth potential.

In addition to several sponsors, the PIPE also received support and participation from multiple global investment firms and leaders in the digital asset ecosystem, including:

· Companies/Enterprises: Big Brain Holdings, Bitwise Asset Management, Borderless Capital, Coinlist Alpha, Cyber Fund, C/M Capital Partners, LP, FalconX, Graticule Asset Management Asia, Jupiter, L1 Digital, ParaFi, Ribbit Capital, RockawayX, and SkyBridge Capital.

· Angel Investors: Cindy Leow (Drift), Guy Young (Ethena), Howard Lindzon (Stockwits), Lucas Bruder (Jito), Lucas Netz (Pudgy Penguins), Robert Leshner (Superstate), Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet), and Tory Green (io.net).

The PIPE financing concluded today, and at the same time, I was appointed Chairman of the Board of the company. As one of the earliest and most active supporters of Solana since leading the seed round in early 2018, I gladly accepted the opportunity to take on this role. As for my position at Multicoin, there is no change; I will continue to serve as Managing Partner.

As part of the financing's conclusion, Jump Crypto Chief Investment Officer Saurabh Sharma and Galaxy Capital President and Chief Investment Officer Chris Ferraro were granted board observer rights. I am very pleased to work with them.

SOL DAT

Solana has a vibrant, heterogeneous, competitive, and thriving DeFi ecosystem, composed of dozens of mature teams. Therefore, Forward Industries has the opportunity to deploy its SOL funds into the DeFi sector, creating differentiated sources of yield for shareholders and further accelerating SOL purchases.

While we expect the SOL treasury to participate in staking and DeFi, we have also identified other strategies that Multicoin believes the company is capable of exploring:

1. First, Multicoin believes that by leveraging the sponsors' deep networks within the Solana ecosystem (dating back to the 2018 seed round), the company will be uniquely positioned to acquire discounted and locked SOL.

2. Second, beyond the obvious on-chain activities such as staking and participating in DeFi, the company also sees a potentially huge and lucrative design space: arbitraging the capital cost differential between services provided by banks to public companies and those offered by DeFi. We believe this arbitrage strategy can manifest in many different ways across numerous counterparties.

3. Third, given the sponsors' credentials, the scale of company funds, and the sponsors' deep understanding and relationships within the Solana ecosystem, the company believes it can leverage these relationships to strike deals with major Solana protocols and applications to help improve liquidity, while also aiming to enhance returns for company shareholders.

Michael Saylor pioneered the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) company strategy, using bitcoin (BTC) as the corporate reserve asset for Strategy. He defined the company's "North Star" as "the increase in BTC per share." Forward Industries is now seeking to further develop the model pioneered by Saylor, taking SOL as its reserve asset for its digital asset treasury strategy. Similarly, Multicoin is investing in the company with the expectation that the company's "North Star" will be the increase in SOL per share, aiming to enhance shareholder value through customized strategies and active management of the company's treasury.

We believe SOL is the best asset to underpin a DAT; it possesses several unique attributes that BTC and ETH lack.

SOL can generate real yield through staking. The "yield" from SOL comes from organic economic activity as well as MEV. Over the past few years, Multicoin has written and presented on MEV multiple times. For Solana, as of September 2025, SOL stakers receive an average yield of 8.05%, which includes about 6.19% inflation rate and about 1.86% real yield from organic economic activity and MEV. This yield is paid to SOL stakers approximately every 2.5 days. While the nominal yield for ETH staking so far in 2025 is about 3.21%, 2.81% of that is inflation, and the real yield is only around 0.41%. As the foundation for a perpetual capital instrument, we believe this makes SOL an extremely attractive asset for DAT.

We believe that, given SOL's inherent attributes, the convertible and perpetual preferred structures promoted by Strategy are much more effective for SOL DAT than for BTC DAT. The company can use these sources of yield to repay debt in ways that BTC DATs cannot. Bitcoin's real yield is zero.