Solana seen as settlement layer amid Base's cross-chain move

A wave of infrastructure moves, asset flows and corporate partnerships has focused fresh attention on Solana as a potential settlement layer for tokenized markets and crosschain financial products, industry participants said this week. Key developments include the launch of an open-source bridge between Coinbase’s Base layer 2 and Solana, more than $760 million bridged onto Solana in September, and a strategic treasury partnership between Crypto.com and Sharps Technology to manage a large institutional Solana holding.

The Base bridge, announced on September 15 and currently in testnet, will allow tokens to move directly between the two networks without routing through an exchange, reducing the kinds of custody and routing risks that have led to lost funds in the past, engineers and industry observers said. By locking assets on one chain and issuing equivalents on the other, the bridge aims to make transfers homogeneous and expand liquidity access for traders, market makers and startups that operate across both ecosystems.

Crosschain activity has already surged. Protocol data shows more than $760 million of assets were moved onto Solana from networks including Ethereum, other EVM...