In Brief:
- At the opening of epoch 1020 on Aug. 21, Solana lowered mainnet slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350ms — a first for the network.
- This is stage one of four laid out in SIMD-0525, which charts a route toward a 200ms goal, and every stage needs a new round of validator sign-off.
- The milestone arrived in the same week that Securitize took Neuberger’s $230 billion fixed-income platform onchain and tokenized equity supply on Solana reached an all-time high of $465 million.
Epoch 1020 kicked off on Aug. 21 with Solana’s mainnet slot time dropped to 350 milliseconds, marking the first such reduction since the chain went live. Block production had run on a 400ms target from the very beginning.
That 50ms shave represents the opening move of a four-part sequence defined by SIMD-0525, a proposal that was approved and merged on May 14 and spells out configurations at 350ms, 300ms, 250ms and 200ms.
The clock just ticked faster.
From a 350ms slot record to healthcare stocks to an actual dinosaur fossil, with $230B of Wall Street fixed income along the way. All of it sounded crazy until this week.
Here's what shipped
Headline News
– Solana reduced its slot time to@SolanaView on X ↗
Jacob Creech, vice president of technology at the Solana Foundation, broke the news on X, saying the network had entered “a new era of 350ms” and following up with, “Next stop, 300ms.”
How the cut shipped
Activation of the 350ms feature account happened at slot 440,208,000, which opened epoch 1019. Because each activation is followed by a compulsory one-epoch delay, mainnet continued running at an effective 400ms for the remainder of that epoch before the switch took hold.
All four stages ship inside Anza’s Agave v4.2 client, with each one gated behind a later epoch so that the rollout can be halted if block-skip rates start rising. Before any step advances, close to two-thirds of staked validators have to opt in.
Quicker slots translate to quicker confirmations. What they do not do is raise the network’s overall throughput.
At press time, average slot times were hovering around 360 milliseconds. No activation date has been set by developers for the 300ms stage; they intend to observe how the network behaves at 350ms first.
On testnet, the move from 400ms to 350ms went live Aug. 5, and no breaking changes were reported.
Progressing in parallel is Alpenglow, a distinct consensus rework that began community validator testing back in May. It aims for confirmation times in the neighborhood of 150ms and does away with Proof of History along with onchain vote transactions. Anza has described it as the biggest consensus change Solana has ever undertaken.
Neuberger’s high-yield fund goes multichain
On Aug. 18, Securitize rolled out the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund — ticker HINC — simultaneously on Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Sui. Never before has Neuberger taken on the subadvisor role for a tokenized fund.
More than $230 billion sits on the firm’s fixed-income platform. Its total assets under management came to $613 billion as of June 30.
The bulk of HINC’s investments go into high-yield bonds, though the fund is also permitted to hold collateralized loan obligations and leveraged loans. How the portfolio is divided among those instruments wasn’t detailed in the announcement.
“Launching HINC across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana and Sui, gives eligible investors access through four leading blockchain networks, supported by Securitize’s regulated, end-to-end tokenization platform,” said Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize.
Investment adviser duties fall to Securitize Capital. Interests are offered by Securitize Markets to accredited investors and qualified purchasers who pass KYC and AML screening, meaning the tokens will not trade freely.
That same day, Securitize put forward a proposal to list HINC on Aave Horizon on Ethereum as supply-only collateral, a move that would allow qualifying holders to borrow USDC, GHO and RLUSD against their positions. To date, tokenized funds have largely confined themselves to treasuries and money market strategies.
Trading in Securitize stock (SECZ) opened July 2 — the first-ever debut to take place on the New York Stock Exchange and onchain at the same moment. Last month the company obtained registered investment advisor status from the SEC.
Moderna and Eli Lilly list onchain
Tokenized equity supply on Solana pushed past $465 million to set a record, following the go-live of Moderna and Eli Lilly through Backpack Securities by way of the Sunrise liquidity gateway.
The tickers are $MRNA for Moderna and $LLY for Eli Lilly. Holders can redeem each $MRNA token 1-to-1 for a conventional Moderna share via Backpack Securities, and the token trades 24/7 on Jupiter, Phantom, Raydium and Kamino.
Timing was notable: the listing landed as Moderna and Merck announced the first positive Phase 3 results for an mRNA cancer therapy.
Backpack Securities launched in June 2026 with tokenized SpaceX shares, going live the same day SpaceX made its Nasdaq debut, and has expanded its roster since to include names such as Micron. July saw it clock $1.06 billion in tokenized equities volume on Solana.
Across the first half of 2026, tokenized stock volume on Solana hit $4.9 billion — six times the $775 million logged in the back half of 2025. Tokenized-stock-linked DeFi deposits add up to $75.4 million.
And a Triceratops
A museum-grade Triceratops prorsus skull called Deaton is set to be brought onchain by Jurassic Finance. Unearthed in 1999, the specimen still holds 60% to 65% of its original bone mass.
Every acquisition is wrapped in its own dedicated special purpose vehicle that issues a corresponding SPL token. For Deaton, supply is capped at one million tokens, split 95% to investors and 5% to the RAWR treasury.
Authentication, custody and insurance all remain off-chain. The only thing recorded on Solana is ownership.
Since July the project has brought in 660,000 USDC, of which 600,000 USDC went into seller escrow and 60,000 USDC to the treasury. After a specimen is acquired and installed, museums cover operational overhead in return for display rights.
In the 24 hours that followed the announcement, RAWR climbed more than 89%.