Cboe on Wednesday filed for a rules change with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that would enable the exchange to list shares for a Solana exchange-traded fund proposed by Franklin Templeton.
The submission comes less than a week after the investment manager applied for the ETF that would track the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market value and underscores the quickening pace that these funds are being proposed and considered and growing interest in Solana funds.
Once the SEC acknowledges the 19b-4 submission, the regulator has 240 days to decide on the request.
The SEC has started a period for public comment on spot Solana funds proposed by Canary Capital, VanEck, 21Shares and Bitwise. Earlier this month, Grayscale Investments also applied for an ETF, with the SEC’s acknowledgment, positioning it as a potential bellwether for a broader group of proposals.
Franklin Templeton is among several firms to apply for ETFs tracking XRP, the third largest crypto by market capitalization. Other issuers have also recently proposed funds tracking Litecoin, Dogecoin and Cardano.
Those applications and related initiatives in the ETF space have followed the roaring success of spot bitcoin ETFs, which won approval 14 months ago after years of SEC resistance. Those funds now manage close to $100 billion in assets. Spot Ethereum funds have generated less interest but have still generated nearly $2.5 billion in net inflows in their roughly eight-month history.
The Solana token was recently trading at about $124, roughly flat over the past 24 hours, although less than half its all-time high set in January–swept up in the wider crypto rout of the past two months. Solana has been the favored blockchain for developers of meme coins, some of which have been particularly hard hit over this period.
Franklin Templeton first dipped its toes in the crypto space in 2019, when it started digitizing shares for a money market fund on the Stellar blockchain.
It then announced a digital asset venture fund back in 2021, and now operates Ethereum and Bitcoin ETFs.
Edited by James Rubin