Canada launches North America’s first spot Solana ETFs as crypto race ramps up

North America’s first spot Solana ETFs began trading in Canada on Wednesday, marking yet another breakthrough for the country’s pioneering cryptocurrency fund industry.

Four asset managers — 3iQ Corp., Evolve Funds Group Inc., CI Global Asset Management (CI GAM) and Purpose Investments — have each listed products on the Toronto Stock Exchange. This comes after the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) gave the regulatory green light on Monday for the funds that provide exposure to Solana tokens (SOL), the world’s sixth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Two ETFs tracking Solana futures launched in the U.S. in March, but those funds provide indirect exposure to the digital asset by tracking the price of Solana futures contracts. The Canadian funds are the first of their kind in North America to provide direct spot exposure to the price movements of SOL, beating asset managers in the U.S. to the punch as they await regulatory approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch such products.

Canada was also ahead of the U.S. in launching spot bitcoin and spot ether ETFs in 2021.

“We are very proud and excited that Canada is [a leader] again in crypto,” said Vlad Tasevski, chief innovation officer with Purpose, in an interview.

What is Solana?

Launched in 2020, Solana is a public blockchain platform designed for decentralized applications and crypto transactions. SOL is the native cryptocurrency of the network, used in transactions and staking.

Solana also hosts several meme coins, such as the Trump meme coin, $TRUMP.

“It has multiple verticals, like [non-fungible tokens], gaming, storage, it facilitates transactions,” said Geraldo Ferreira, senior vice-president and head of investment products and manager oversight with CI GAM.

Solana is known for delivering faster and cheaper transactions than rival blockchains like Ethereum. However, Solana has experienced network outages and a major hack in the past, which critics see as a trade-off for its speed, with some calling the security of the platform into question.

Moreover, like other cryptocurrencies, SOL is volatile. Its price can fluctuate significantly due to various factors such as regulatory changes, technological advancements and overall market sentiment.

How do the four new Solana ETFs differ?

The new funds from 3iQ, Evolve, CI GAM and Purpose are similar, although they vary in staking approaches, management fees and other ways.

“Our fund and our competitors’ funds, we’re all holding physical SOL, so there’s no difference in the underlying asset,” said Elliot Johnson, chief investment officer and chief operating officer with Evolve.

“It really has more to do with the packaging.”

In addition to providing spot Solana exposure, all four funds intend to stake a portion of their SOL holdings in order to earn rewards of additional SOL tokens.

Staking is part of a process that validates transactions and helps to secure blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, said Josh Deems, head of sales, Americas with Toronto-based institutional staking provider Figment, which 3iQ selected as the primary staking provider for its fund, the Solana Staking ETF (TSX: SOLQ).

“Let’s say you have one Solana [token] per share at the launch. The idea is you’re going to have more Solana per share over time, because there are going to be rewards that accrue to the fund. So, there’s going to be a larger pool of Solana based on the same amount of units,” Deems explained.

“Secondary to that is the security to the network. You’re actively making sure that that network is running effectively by using an ETF that’s staking the asset. The knock-on effect is the financial reward, but also, … you’re directly contributing to the operability of that particular network.”

There are different approaches to staking, though. For one, Evolve has noted that it intends to initially target staking of up to 50% of the Solana tokens held in the portfolio of its fund, the Evolve Solana ETF (TSX: SOLA, SOLA.U). Meanwhile, CI GAM has said that as the manager of the CI Galaxy Solana ETF (TSX: SOLX), it’s entitled to up to 35% of the net rewards from staking, while no less than 65% will accrue to the ETF.

Staking has potential downsides and risks, including liquidity lockups.

Management fees are another differentiator.

3iQ’s SOLQ will have a 0% management fee for the first 12 months (possibly longer), with the fee becoming 0.15% thereafter, said Greg Benhaim, executive vice-president of products and head of training with 3iQ.

CI GAM has waived the fee of SOLX until July 16, so the fund will have a 0% management fee until that day, when it will be 0.35%.

Evolve has waived the management fee of SOLA (the Canadian-dollar unhedged version of the fund) and SOLA.U (the U.S.-dollar version of the fund) for the remainder of 2025. As of Jan. 1, 2026, a 1.00% management fee will apply to the fund.

The Purpose Solana ETF (TSX: SOLL) has a 0.39% management fee.

There are some other notable differences.

That includes different approaches to staking infrastructure. For example, 3iQ has chosen Figment as its primary staking provider, which Benhaim said allows for “a clear delineation between investment manager and staking providers” and avoids conflicts of interest in the staking validation process. On the other hand, Purpose is relying on its proprietary in-house validator infrastructure, which Tasevski said allows the firm “to provide staking at a much lower cost than others.”

For its part, Purpose offers its fund in Canadian-dollar-hedged (TSX: SOLL), Canadian-dollar-non-hedged (TSX: SOLL.B), and U.S.-dollar, non-hedged (TSX: SOLL.U) units, giving investors the option to invest in “Canadian-dollar units with the currency hedge, so they can use their Canadian investment account without having to worry about currency fluctuations, because Solana is a U.S.-dollar denominated asset,” Tasevski said.

Meanwhile, the Evolve fund’s portfolio will be priced based on the CME CF Solana-Dollar Reference Rate, which will also be used to calculate its net asset value. This is a daily benchmark index price for Solana, denominated in U.S. dollars.

What’s the outlook for Solana ETFs?

Johnson is bullish on Solana, and Solana ETFs by extension, given that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has signalled it will deliver crypto reforms in the U.S., which could lead to greater acceptance of crypto elsewhere.

“It sets the tone for other governments around the world to develop more robust crypto friendly regulations and policies. It also provides clarity to the industry, so the entrepreneurs within crypto who are looking to build new products and services now have clarity of what they’re allowed to do,” he said.

“And we think Solana stands to benefit substantially from those changes.”

Tasevski said he sees long-term opportunity in investing in Solana as part of a broader diversified portfolio.

“Short term, it’s going to be volatile, but long term, we are very happy, because we see a lot of uses and benefits of the high-speed throughput infrastructure of the Solana network.”

Fereira noted that there’s interest in spot Solana ETFs from investors beyond the borders of Canada.

“We’ve had inquiries from firms in Taiwan, like on the other side of the world, inquiring about our launch of this Solana ETF, so there’s definitely global interest in this, not just Canadian interest,” he said.

“So, I think it could be very similar to the success of Ethereum.”

In the event that the SEC approves the launch of spot Solana ETFs in the U.S., Fereira said he expects to see flows move from Canadian spot Solana ETFs into U.S. counterparts, as was the case with spot bitcoin ETFs. At the same time, he expects there still to be interest in these products from Canadian investors.

“I think there probably will be some of that activity happening, where investors will be moving to a U.S. offering, but there’s still a significant amount of assets that are in in Canada, trading on Canadian exchanges. We [at CI GAM alone] have close to $2 billion in digital assets,” he said.

Benhaim echoed that comment.

“At least for the time being, Canada will be competitive and outperform even the native Solana ETFs that will eventually come and launch in the U.S.”