DeFi Development Corp to acquire SOL validator business for $3.5 million

Real-estate software firm and SOL accumulator DeFi Development Corporation has agreed to acquire a Solana validator business for a purchase price of $3.5 million. The acquisition will be financed via a $3 million restricted stock offering as well as $500,000 in cash. 

The SOL validator business held an average delegated solana stake of about 500,000 SOL, worth around $75.5 million at the time of writing, according to a Monday release. The acquired firm will allow DeFi Development Corp. to self-stake its SOL holdings. Additionally, DeFi Development Corp. will absorb all the acquired firm's Solana staking rewards. 

"We're thrilled to bring a validator into our business, which has been our intention since the change of control approximately a month ago," the firm's Chairman and CEO Joseph Onorati told The Block in an email. "Running our own high-performance validator will help to increase SOL per share growth, which is the company's key metric, by not only increasing yield but also decreasing cost by not having to rely on third party validators. Additionally, the acquisition comes with third-party delegated stake, which will generate revenue and in turn drive SOL per share growth."

"This acquisition doesn’t just add a new line of protocol-native cashflow, it amplifies our alignment with the infrastructure underpinning tomorrow’s decentralized economy,” said Parker White, chief investment officer and chief operations officer of DeFi Dev Corp., in a statement. “Owning and operating validators with significant delegated stake puts us at the core of Solana — while furthering our mission of effectively accumulating SOL to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns relative to holding SOL directly."

DeFi Development Corp. declined to reveal the name of the soon-to-be acquired Solana validator business. 

DeFi Development Corp. has pivoted from solely providing data and software subscriptions to the real estate industry to becoming the "Strategy of Solana" earlier this year. Whereas Michael Saylor's firm Strategy owns more than half a million in BTC — slowly grows its holdings through occasional bitcoin lot purchases, DeFi Development Corp. gradually accrued more SOL tokens in the past few months for its crypto treasury strategy.

DeFi Dev Corp. holds 317,273 SOL solana, valued at $46.2 million, as of May 1. The firm rebranded from "Janover" on April 22 after former Kraken executives took a majority stake in the company, The Block previously reported. 

Solana traded at around $145 per token as of publication time, and it saw about $2.3 billion in trading volume in the past 24 hours, according to The Block's solana price page. 

(Update: May 5, 18:44 UTC: Includes quote from Joseph Onorati.)