This episode reveals the blueprint for Forward Industries, a $1.6 billion public company aiming to become the largest Solana treasury and merge traditional capital markets with fully on-chain financial operations.
Forward Industries: More Than Just Another Digital Asset Treasury
- On-Chain Pioneer: Forward Industries aims to be the "guinea pig" for running a publicly traded company on-chain. This involves tokenizing its own equity and moving core operations like payroll, vendor payments, and shareholder governance votes onto the Solana network. The goal is to create a proven model for other companies to follow.
- Leveraging Scale for Value: The company plans to use its significant scale and brand reputation to negotiate preferential deals with Solana protocols, securing additional equity or tokens to increase its SOL-per-share value.
- M&A and Consolidation: Samani predicts significant consolidation in the DAT market, which he believes cannot sustain dozens of players. Forward Industries intends to be a primary acquirer, capitalizing on opportunities to merge with other DATs trading at a discount to their Net Asset Value (NAV).
- Innovative Financial Instruments: The company will explore perpetual preferreds, a type of equity that pays a fixed dividend indefinitely. Unlike Bitcoin-based strategies, Forward can use Solana's native staking yield and DeFi yield to service these payments, creating a more sustainable financial structure.
The Vision for a Public Company on Solana
- Samani details the ambitious, multi-year plan to transition Forward Industries into the "most natively on-chain publicly traded company in the world." This process begins with tokenizing a portion of its equity, allowing for on-chain fundraising, dividend distributions, and governance.
- While existing NASDAQ shares will remain with the DTCC, a central securities depository, Samani expects a significant portion of the new $1.65 billion investment to take delivery of their shares as tokens on Solana.
- He acknowledges the complexity but expresses confidence in the feasibility of moving functions like payroll and shareholder voting on-chain, setting a major precedent for how public companies can operate.
Anatomy of the $1.65 Billion Fundraise
- The capital raise was completed in just two weeks, a testament to strong institutional demand. The investor base represents a strategic mix of traditional finance and crypto-native firms, signaling broadening institutional interest in sophisticated crypto vehicles.
- Investor Composition: Samani estimates the investor breakdown was approximately 60% traditional finance and 40% crypto-native. High-profile hedge funds and crypto firms like ParaFi and Cyber Fund participated.
- Personal Conviction: Samani personally invested $25 million, in addition to Multicoin Capital's significant investment, underscoring his deep belief in the venture. "In retrospect it was inevitable," he commented on his decision.
The "Dream Team": Multicoin, Jump, and Galaxy
- Forward Industries is a collaboration between three of the most influential firms in crypto, each bringing a unique and critical set of capabilities. The sponsor economics are split evenly, one-third to each partner.
- Galaxy Digital: Manages the asset operations, including buying, selling, and staking SOL. Their team, which ran the FTX estate's locked SOL sale, provides unparalleled access to and expertise in the locked token market.
- Jump Crypto: Provides critical infrastructure and trading technology. All of Forward's validator nodes will run on Fire Dancer, Jump's high-performance Solana client. Forward will also leverage Jump's proprietary trading systems to generate incremental yield.
- Multicoin Capital: Drives strategy and ecosystem integration. Samani's role is to be the public face and "cheerleader," leveraging Multicoin's deep relationships within the Solana ecosystem to forge strategic partnerships.
Core Strategy 1: Acquiring Discounted Solana
- A key part of the strategy involves purchasing locked or non-transferable SOL at a discount to the spot price. Samani clarifies that this will constitute a minority of the balance sheet and directly addresses potential conflicts of interest.
- He states unequivocally: "Forward Industries is not going to face Multicoin, Jump or Galaxy for buying locked tokens or for that matter liquid tokens. Full like full stop." This ensures that the vehicle is not used to provide liquidity for the sponsors' own holdings.
Core Strategy 2: Arbitraging Global Credit Rates
- Forward Industries plans to execute a sophisticated arbitrage strategy between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). This model is a powerful example of how crypto-native firms can capitalize on inefficiencies between the two financial systems.
- The Strategy: The plan is to borrow US dollars from traditional lenders at an anticipated rate of 4-5% by using liquid SOL as collateral.
- Deployment: These funds will then be deployed into Solana DeFi protocols, which currently offer yields between 12-20%.
- The Profit: The spread between the borrowing cost and the on-chain yield generates profit, which can be used to acquire more SOL or pay dividends.
Core Strategy 3: Strategic Capital Deployment in Solana DeFi
- Leveraging its treasury size and the sponsors' deep ecosystem knowledge, Forward will "strike deals" with major Solana protocols. This goes beyond passive yield farming and involves forming active partnerships to enhance liquidity and returns.
- The firm will spread its capital across multiple established protocols, using a "dollar days" metric (total value locked over time) to assess smart contract risk rather than chasing unproven, high-risk yields.
- This strategy is expected to create a positive feedback loop, providing deep liquidity to key Solana protocols while generating superior returns for Forward's shareholders.
The Future of DATs: Consolidation and M&A
- Samani predicts a future of significant consolidation for DATs, arguing that smaller, less-liquid ecosystems will struggle to sustain their vehicles. He positions Forward Industries to be a primary acquirer in this rollup.
- He believes DATs for smaller ecosystems like Sui and Avalanche will face the most difficulty, lacking the liquidity, service providers, and institutional lender support necessary to execute advanced strategies.
- Forward's M&A strategy will target both Solana-based and non-Solana DATs, using its potentially higher valuation to execute accretive deals for shareholders.
Perpetual Preferreds: A Better Financial Model for Yield-Bearing Assets
- Samani highlights the potential of using perpetual preferreds, a financial instrument popularized by MicroStrategy, but argues it is far better suited for a yield-bearing asset like Solana.
- While MicroStrategy must rely on its core business or further debt to pay the coupons on its preferreds, Forward can use Solana's native staking yield (~8%) and its DeFi credit arbitrage profits to service these payments organically.
- This inherent cash flow could allow Forward to secure even better financing terms than MicroStrategy, as it can demonstrably prove its ability to cover its obligations.
An Investor's High-Agency Philosophy
- Samani rejects the passive role of a traditional capital allocator, framing his involvement as that of a high-agency builder actively shaping the future of finance. He sees the operational challenges and potential conflicts as necessary costs of driving the ecosystem forward.
- "We're building a new financial system from the ground up here and like our ability to do things moves the needle in the long-term success of the ecosystem as a whole."
The Debate on Enshrining a Stablecoin
- Addressing the recent debate around Hyperliquid's decision to favor a specific stablecoin, Samani argues strongly that open L1s like Solana should remain neutral platforms that foster competition among stablecoin issuers.
- He contends that "kingmaking" a single stablecoin is the behavior of a centralized exchange, not an open financial protocol. By remaining open, Solana encourages innovation from issuers like Circle, Tether, and PayPal, ultimately benefiting the entire ecosystem.
The Vision for Internet Capital Markets
- Looking ahead, Samani envisions a new financial system built from first principles: a "global 24/7 permissionless programmable system that is of course secured by cryptography."
- He predicts finance will become embedded directly into all software applications, breaking free from the siloed, destination-based model of today. Examples include prediction markets on news sites, in-game sports betting on smart TVs, and trading via chatbots.
- The ultimate catalyst, he believes, will be the native integration of stablecoins into iOS and Android. He views this as an inevitable development that will onboard billions of users and cause crypto adoption to "go absolutely vertical."
Conclusion
This episode outlines a strategic playbook for merging a publicly traded company with on-chain finance, using scale and ecosystem integration to generate value beyond passive asset holding. Investors and researchers should monitor Forward's progress in tokenizing its equity and executing its credit arbitrage and M&A strategies as key indicators of crypto's institutional maturation.
