One Exchange Wants to Put All 10,000 US Stocks on Solana – Inside Backpacks Plan to Merge Wall Street With DeFi

The CEO of crypto exchange Backpack says he wants to bring the entire US stock market – roughly 10,000 companies – onto the Solana blockchain, letting a real share move back and forth between a brokerage account and decentralized finance through a single interface.

By Amir Hassan | September 26, 2026

Armani Ferrante, who founded Backpack and built the popular Solana wallet of the same name, laid out the ambition in a clip shared by Solana on September 26. “Not 10 stocks, not 100 stocks. We want to bring the entire stock market to Solana,” Ferrante said, describing one API – a single connection standard – through which a genuine share could travel from a traditional brokerage account into decentralized finance applications and back again.

The Hook: From 200 Tokens to the Whole Market

Tokenized stocks – digital tokens that represent real shares – have been one of 2026’s fastest-growing crypto trends. Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, and others have all rolled out versions of the idea. Backpack’s current footprint covers about 200 stock symbols in tokenized form, according to Ferrante’s description of the starting point. His stated target is a fiftyfold expansion to 10,000 symbols.

No launch date was given, and the post did not say which stocks would arrive first. But the scale of the claim alone puts Backpack at the front of a race to become the bridge between conventional securities accounts and onchain markets.

How the Technology Actually Works

Backpack introduced its securities platform in June. The mechanics work like a currency exchange booth between two financial worlds. Customers hold US stocks and exchange-traded funds through Backpack’s brokerage service. Eligible holdings can then be converted into tokenized securities that live on Solana, where they behave like any other crypto token: they can sit in a wallet, move between users, or be used in DeFi applications.

Depositing a supported token back through Backpack Exchange converts it into a traditional security entitlement again. The company says its brokerage holdings are governed by New York’s Uniform Commercial Code Article 8 – the same body of law that protects stock ownership at conventional brokerages – and that the service plugs into established Wall Street infrastructure, including ACATS account transfers and Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation systems.

• Cash dividends are supported through traditional securities infrastructure for brokerage holders.
• Corporate actions like stock splits are handled onchain through proportional changes to token balances.
• Real products already exist – Backpack has issued tokenized versions of SpaceX, Micron, SanDisk, and, as of September 23, CoreWeave.

The Core Conflict: Convenience Versus Ownership Rights

Here is where regular investors should slow down and read carefully. A tokenized share is not always the same thing as the share itself. In Backpack’s Micron product, for example, the company says brokerage holders receive cash dividends, while token holders get dividends reinvested into additional tokens. The economics are preserved, but the mechanics differ from a standard brokerage account.

The SEC warned about exactly this in a January staff statement, noting that the rights attached to a token depend on its structure and may differ from those attached to the underlying security. Tokens backed by real shares held in custody are not the same as synthetic products that merely track a price. Backpack’s redemption and dividend rules apply to its products – they should not be assumed to apply to every token carrying a familiar stock ticker.

There is also a regulatory boundary. On September 17, the SEC granted conditional five-year relief allowing certain venues to trade tokenized US exchange-listed stocks through permissioned trading pools – but only under strict conditions. A qualifying venue must verify the token gives holders the same rights as a traditional share, notify companies when a third party tokenizes their stock, publish auditable smart contracts, and halt token trading whenever the underlying stock is halted. The SEC has not identified Backpack as a participating venue. Much of Backpack’s tokenized stock activity to date has been aimed at users outside the United States.

Market Implications: Why Solana Wants Your Stock Portfolio

If even a fraction of US equities trading moved onchain, it would be transformative for Solana. Stocks trade around the clock in global markets, but settlement is still bound by banking hours. Tokenized shares on a blockchain can move 24/7, in seconds, with no intermediary – and they can be used as collateral in DeFi lending, paired in liquidity pools, or programmatically managed by wallets and trading bots.

For Solana holders, more stock activity means more demand for blockspace and deeper ties to traditional finance. For stock investors, it hints at a future where your Apple shares can earn yield in a DeFi protocol on a Saturday night – something no conventional brokerage offers today.

Backpack has also been strengthening its US bench. In September, the company’s American arm appointed Kyle Samani, the former Multicoin Capital executive, to its board to support its work across regulated US financial services and onchain markets.

The Verdict: A Bold Roadmap, Not a Finished Product

Ten thousand stocks on Solana is a destination, not a delivery. The plan has no timetable, and the regulatory path for US retail access remains only partially built. What is real today is the plumbing: a working brokerage integration, a handful of live tokenized products, and a one-for-one conversion mechanism that has already been demonstrated with real companies.

The race to tokenize equities is no longer a fringe experiment – it is a competition between some of the biggest names in both crypto and traditional finance. Backpack’s bet is that the winner will not be the firm with the most licenses, but the one that makes moving between Wall Street and the blockchain feel as easy as moving money between two apps. If Ferrante’s team gets anywhere near 10,000 symbols, the line between a stock portfolio and a crypto wallet will get very blurry indeed.

The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.