Amundi launches UCITS tokenized fund on Solana: €2.4 trillion asset management giant expands on-chain RWA strategy

In May 2026, a major announcement from Amundi, the largest asset management firm in Europe, sent ripples through both the crypto and traditional finance sectors: with €2.4 trillion under management, Amundi decided to launch its first fully UCITS-compliant tokenized fund on the Solana blockchain. This isn’t a fringe experiment or a publicity stunt. The fund, named Spiko Amundi Overnight Swap Fund (SAFO), is structured as a regulated tokenized sub-fund under SPIKO SICAV and is directly supervised by the French Financial Markets Authority. From traditional compliance frameworks to high-performance blockchain settlement, Amundi’s move offers a verifiable answer to the question of "institutional DeFi."

What is the SAFO Fund?

SAFO is a tokenized money market fund designed for professional investors and institutional clients. Its investment strategy is straightforward: it operates through total return swap contracts fully collateralized by tier-one banks, with BNP Paribas as the primary counterparty. The fund allows subscriptions and redemptions in four fiat currencies—EUR, USD, GBP, and CHF—with a minimum investment threshold of one unit per currency class.

What truly sets SAFO apart is its combination of legal structure and on-chain deployment. SAFO is a transferable securities collective investment scheme under the UCITS framework. This means it can be registered in any EU member state and distributed across the EU via a passporting mechanism, without the need for separate applications in each country. For European institutional capital, which has long viewed compliance costs as a barrier to on-chain participation, this structure breaks a critical wall. UCITS is one of the most widely recognized fund compliance frameworks globally, and its spillover effect may extend to markets in Asia, the Middle East, and other regions that use UCITS as a reference standard.

In terms of architecture, Amundi handles investment management and asset allocation, while Spiko Finance acts as transfer agent, tokenization platform, and broker. Amundi’s custody arm, CACEIS, is responsible for depositary and fund administration. For on-chain data publication, the fund’s net asset value is calculated and updated via Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network, providing investors with verifiable on-chain NAV information.

This marks SAFO’s eighth blockchain deployment. Previously, the fund was launched on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, Starknet, Stellar, and Etherlink. As of March 2026, the fund had amassed approximately $100 million in committed assets across these seven chains.

Accelerating Institutional Migration On-Chain

Placing Amundi’s decision on a broader timeline reveals a clear evolutionary path.

Second half of 2025: Laying the compliance groundwork. In October 2025, the US Solana spot ETF was officially approved for listing, opening a compliant channel for traditional brokerage accounts to gain Solana exposure. Around the same time, RedStone launched its RWA oracle on Solana, tailored for tokenized government bonds and credit products, providing crucial middleware for traditional financial assets to connect with Solana DeFi protocols.

Q1 2026: Institutional capital influx. In February 2026, BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL grew to $525.4 million on Solana, becoming the largest RWA asset on the chain. In March, Franklin Templeton and Ondo Finance entered a strategic partnership, launching tokenized versions of five ETFs via Ondo Global Markets on Solana—marking the first time this $1.7 trillion asset management giant brought its fund products onto the Solana network. That same month, Plume Network extended its Nest protocol to Solana, integrating the Perena platform to offer institutional-grade RWA yield vaults to Solana users. Also in March, the US SEC and CFTC classified SOL as a digital commodity, paving the way for expanded spot ETF offerings and institutional derivatives.

April 2026: Ecosystem milestones. The number of SPL token holding addresses on Solana surpassed 167 million, and the total value of tokenized assets exceeded $2.5 billion. Shinhan Card, South Korea’s largest credit card issuer, signed an MOU with the Solana Foundation to explore stablecoin payment solutions; SoFi also announced plans to build enterprise-level fiat and stablecoin banking services on Solana.

May 2026: Amundi’s official launch. On May 15, Spiko CEO Paul-Adrien Hyppolite announced SAFO’s migration to Solana at the "House of Sol" institutional conference in London. On May 22, the fund officially went live on Solana, becoming the ecosystem’s first UCITS-compliant tokenized fund.

A Multifaceted View of the Tokenized RWA Market

Market size and growth

The overall size of the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market continues to climb. As of May 2026, the total value of tokenized assets reached $3.401 billion, with tokenized US Treasury products accounting for nearly $1.6 billion. Solana’s RWA market cap grew 43% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, reaching $2.01 billion. Meanwhile, RWA lending deposits surged 115% to $1.23 billion in the same period. Notably, this growth occurred while Solana’s token price dropped by about 30% to 35%, indicating that the expansion was driven by the underlying value of the assets rather than speculative price action.

Ecosystem health metrics

Data from multiple dimensions reveal structural expansion in Solana’s RWA ecosystem, quantifiable by the following key metrics:

These figures, sourced from public on-chain analytics and institutional reports, reflect Solana’s RWA ecosystem expansion across multiple dimensions.

Solana’s technical suitability as the preferred RWA chain

Amundi’s choice of Solana over other blockchains is rooted in four key technical considerations:

First, settlement efficiency. As a money market fund, SAFO requires frequent subscriptions, redemptions, and NAV updates, demanding high settlement speed. Solana’s high throughput enables real-time on-chain execution, eliminating reliance on traditional T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles.

Second, cost structure. In traditional fund operations, each transfer, redemption, and NAV publication incurs backend costs. For tokenization to be economically viable, on-chain operations must be significantly cheaper than conventional clearing. Solana’s low transaction fees closely align with this requirement.

Third, asset programmability. The value of on-chain RWAs lies not just in issuance, but in subsequent financial operations. In Q1 2026, Solana’s RWA lending deposits reached $1.23 billion, surpassing Ethereum’s $1.13 billion, indicating that tokenized assets on Solana are actively deployed in DeFi protocols rather than simply held as static assets.

Fourth, upcoming performance leap. Solana is testing a consensus upgrade called Alpenglow, expected to reduce transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to 100–150 milliseconds. If delivered as planned, Solana’s competitive advantage in settlement speed will widen further.

A realistic look at technical limitations

It’s important to note that Solana’s rapid expansion in the RWA sector comes at a cost. Ethereum still holds a commanding lead in overall RWA total value locked (TVL), with about $12.8 billion. Ethereum mainnet’s stablecoin supply exceeds $163.3 billion. Flagship institutional projects like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and JPMorgan’s Onyx platform are built on Ethereum, reinforcing its moat as the "go-to layer for institutional asset tokenization." Solana’s growth in the RWA space is more about opening new incremental markets and capturing high-turnover scenarios, rather than fully replacing Ethereum’s established market share.

Diverse Interpretations of Amundi’s Decision

Amundi’s deployment of a UCITS tokenized fund on Solana has sparked several distinct market narratives:

Compliance breakthrough. Many market participants view the UCITS framework as the core value of Amundi’s move. The UCITS "passporting" system enables rapid fund distribution across the EU, dramatically reducing cross-border compliance costs. Compared to the fragmented regulatory landscape faced by previous crypto asset management products, SAFO provides a reusable compliance template for European institutions seeking on-chain participation.

Institutional validation. The market also sees this as a major endorsement of Solana as institutional-grade infrastructure. With €2.4 trillion in traditional assets under management, Amundi’s choice is a benchmark for Solana. Before Amundi, Franklin Templeton, State Street, and Galaxy had already launched tokenized funds on Solana, establishing a trend of sustained institutional adoption.

Divergent signals. Around the time Amundi entered Solana, about 30 institutions had accumulated roughly $540 million in Solana ETF holdings in Q4 2025, yet SOL’s token price dropped 30%–35% in Q1 2026. This split—institutions increasing exposure on the asset side while token prices remain under pressure—suggests different risk preferences between Solana’s asset value (tokenized fund business) and token value (SOL holdings).

Path divergence. There’s long been debate over how institutions should approach crypto. One camp advocates gaining exposure indirectly through traditional tools like ETFs; the other prefers native on-chain deployment of assets and business operations. Amundi chose the latter—not by buying SOL tokens or Solana ETFs, but by directly launching a regulated fund product on Solana. This path could profoundly influence future institutional participation models.

Narrative upgrade. Messari’s May 2026 report notes that Solana is shedding its "memecoin playground" label and evolving into institutional settlement and tokenized financial infrastructure. Amundi’s entry is seen as the latest and most compelling evidence of this narrative shift.

Industry Impact Analysis: Four Structural Shifts

First, a shift in institutional RWA "chain selection." Previously, large traditional financial institutions typically chose Ethereum or enterprise-grade private chains for their blockchain projects. Amundi’s decision may prompt others to prioritize throughput, settlement speed, and cost structure in their evaluations, rather than focusing solely on existing compliance infrastructure and institutional networks.

Second, deep integration of the UCITS framework and public blockchains. SAFO demonstrates that there’s no insurmountable technical or legal conflict between UCITS regulatory standards and public chain tokenization. This provides a replicable template for other European asset management products seeking on-chain deployment. If regulators continue to recognize this model, more similar on-chain fund products could emerge in the next 12–18 months.

Third, reshaping competitive dynamics in the RWA ecosystem. Ethereum maintains overall scale dominance in RWAs, thanks to deep mainnet stablecoin liquidity (over $163.3 billion) and a network of institutional projects like BlackRock’s BUIDL. Solana, with its high turnover and rapidly growing RWA lending deposits ($1.23 billion in Q1, surpassing Ethereum’s $1.13 billion), is forging a growth path characterized by "active capital deployment." The outcome of this competition will depend on institutional investors’ priorities between "asset custody security" and "asset utilization efficiency."

Fourth, institutional DeFi narrative moves from fringe to core. 2026 is seen as a pivotal year for the blockchain industry’s shift from speculative retail cycles to "structural bets on financial settlement infrastructure." Amundi’s entry is a clear marker of this transition. The deeper logic: when trillion-dollar asset managers start directly deploying regulated fund products on public blockchains, "institutional DeFi" ceases to be just an industry narrative—it becomes a real allocation on traditional finance balance sheets.

Conclusion: A Turning Point, Not the End

Amundi’s launch of a UCITS tokenized fund on Solana marks a critical moment as institutional DeFi moves from concept to practical balance sheet implementation. Its significance lies in this: for the first time, a global top-tier asset manager has natively deployed a highly regulated traditional fund product on a public blockchain, rather than gaining exposure indirectly through ETFs or similar tools. The signal this sends is more persuasive than any industry report.

But it’s equally important to exercise restraint in judgment. One deployment doesn’t equal victory. SAFO’s current AUM is about $100 million—still modest compared to Amundi’s €2.4 trillion total and Solana’s roughly $2 billion RWA market. More importantly, Ethereum’s early lead and deep compliance network in institutional asset tokenization set a high bar for Solana’s catch-up efforts.

Ultimately, Amundi’s decision provides a visible case study: when traditional finance truly steps onto public chains, what do their technical standards, compliance architecture, and asset usage models look like? The value of this example far exceeds fleeting news buzz—it offers the industry a springboard from "discussing possibilities" to "testing feasibility."