Solana Network Unveils Token Extensions: Empowering Financial Institutions and Enterprise-Grade Businesses to Enter Web3

Solana is the first network to offer this level of integrated developer and user experience in a single token program on a public network

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Solana Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the Solana network's decentralization, adoption, and security, today announced the launch of token extensions – the next generation of the SPL Token standard that represents a significant leap forward in what is possible to build on blockchain.

Token extensions are a comprehensive suite of turnkey solutions tailored to meet the needs of businesses moving onchain – arming developers, enterprises, financial institutions, and Solana-native development teams with ready-to-use advanced token functionality. Token extensions provide businesses with many of the same security and compliance controls as permissioned blockchain environments, with massively reduced engineering time, all while operating on one of the world's most popular public blockchains. These solutions represent another major advancement in developer tools on the Solana network contributing to the growth and health of the ecosystem and overall developer experience.

"Token extensions build on the characteristics that make Solana the ideal destination for developers," said Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana and CEO of Solana Labs. "Solana is the first network to offer this level of integrated developer and user experience in a single token program. We're already seeing the potential to build using token extensions via deployments from some of the most recognizable names in crypto."

At the forefront of this launch are recognizable industry leaders like Paxos and GMO-Z.com Trust Company Inc. (GMO Trust) – companies that are leveraging the benefits of token extensions to issue stablecoins on the Solana blockchain. Paxos, a leading regulated blockchain and tokenization infrastructure platform, recently expanded its stablecoin issuance to Solana on December 22. Additionally, GMO Trust announced the first regulated Japanese yen stablecoin as well as their own U.S. dollar stablecoin on the Solana network. Token extensions provided the tools and optionality needed for companies like Paxos and GMO Trust to be at the forefront of innovation, while also remaining compliant.

"The Solana network is the blockchain of choice for enterprise-grade companies looking to enter the web3 space," said Sheraz Shere, Head of Payments at the Solana Foundation. "Companies like Visa, Worldpay, Stripe, Google, and Shopify have already seen the performance advantages inherent to the Solana network and have launched solutions and applications that are only possible on Solana. With token extensions, we are expanding what is possible for enterprise adoption of blockchain by natively enabling features that matter to large regulated enterprises."

"A growing number of enterprises are interested in the benefits of blockchain, but want to ensure that they can adopt the technology in a responsible way that adheres to their internal compliance processes," said Amira Valliani, Head of Policy at the Solana Foundation. "One of the many benefits of token extensions is that it simplifies these processes. Extensions like transfer hooks, confidential transfers, and permanent delegates streamline compliance obligations and ensure that companies don't spend resources customizing smart contracts to implement their compliance frameworks."

Token extensions were designed specifically to cater to builders across various industries, including stablecoins, real-world assets (RWA), and payments. The extensions include:

• Transfer hooks, which give token issuers control over how tokens and users interact, allowing a flexible design that empowers developers to build elaborate token interactions.
• Transfer fees, which add the ability to charge a fee every time a token is transferred, providing sustainable revenue models for any type of token built using token extensions.
• Confidential transfers, which publicly share the source, destination, and token type, but use zero-knowledge proofs to encrypt the amount of the transfer while still providing the issuer of the token certain audit rights necessary for compliance.
• Permanent delegate authority, which gives the token issuer absolute authority over tokens they issue, specifically those that require some sort of revocation ability, like licenses or credentials.
• Non-transferability, which only permits the issuer to transfer tokens to another wallet. This feature can be used for credentialing and unique user identification.

For more information on token extensions, visit solana.com/solutions/token-extensions. 

About Solana
Solana is a blockchain built for mass adoption. It's a high performance network that is utilized for a range of use cases, including finance, NFTs, payments, and gaming. Solana operates as a single global state machine, and is open, interoperable and decentralized. For more information, please visit https://solana.com.

About Solana Labs
Solana Labs is a technology company, a developer of web3 projects, a creator of open-source software, and the author and publisher of a Solana validator client. Solana Labs is based in San Francisco. For more information, please visit https://solanalabs.com.

About Solana Foundation The Solana Foundation is a non-profit foundation based in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana network. For more information, please visit https://solana.org/.

Media Contact
press@solana.org

SOURCE Solana Foundation