The Solana Foundation is looking to strengthen the Solana ecosystem with the launch of a new developer platform aimed at institutional adoption.
An announcement on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, said the platform is expected to attract major global players such as Mastercard and Western Union as early adopters.
The move comes as blockchain projects continue to focus on developer growth despite broader market price pressures.
The backdrop remains challenging for the token, with SOL trading below $100.
However, analysts continue to point to long-term optimism, driven by increasing institutional engagement and ecosystem expansion.
Solana Foundation eyes institutional adoption with new platform
The Solana Foundation has introduced the Solana Developer Platform (SDP), an initiative aimed at simplifying enterprise-grade development on the Solana network.
According to the announcement, SDP provides an AI-ready toolkit that brings together key ecosystem infrastructure into a single, API-driven interface.
The approach is designed to help financial institutions build compliant and scalable blockchain-based products more efficiently.
The platform is intended to support broader institutional adoption by addressing longstanding challenges such as technical complexity and regulatory requirements.
At its core, SDP includes three primary API modules tailored for real-world financial use cases.
The issuance module supports tokenised deposits, GENIUS-compliant stablecoins, and real-world assets (RWAs).
A payments module enables fiat-to-stablecoin orchestration, including on-ramps, off-ramps, and on-chain transactions across business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and peer-to-peer use cases.
In addition, a trading module is designed to support features such as atomic swaps, vaults, and on-chain foreign exchange.
The Solana Foundation said the issuance and payments modules are already live on the devnet sandbox, allowing enterprises to prototype institutional-grade applications more quickly.
Catherine Gu, head of product for digital assets at the Solana Foundation, said:
“Solana Developer Platform provides an easy gateway for any financial institution to build on Solana from day one. It is entirely API-based, removing the technical and operational barriers that enterprise developers may encounter.”
Mastercard, Western Union early SDP users
According to the announcement, several major financial players have already been onboarded, including Mastercard, Western Union, and Worldpay.
Mastercard is expected to use the Solana Developer Platform (SDP) for stablecoin settlement, combining blockchain efficiency with its existing global payments network.
Meanwhile, Western Union plans to leverage SDP’s payments module to enhance cross-border transaction flows.
Worldpay, for its part, is focusing on merchant payments through the platform’s issuance and payments modules, with an emphasis on on-chain settlement and tokenised assets.
“The next phase of digital asset innovation will be defined by practical use cases that integrate seamlessly with existing financial systems. As an early user of Solana Developer Platform, we’re helping enable direct stablecoin settlement for customers on select blockchain networks — beginning with Solana,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president, blockchain & digital assets at Mastercard.
Solana has also partnered with key ecosystem players, including Alchemy, Helius, Anchorage Digital, BitGo, and Coinbase.
Others are blockchain compliance firms Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM.
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