Crypto Custody Technology Firm Fireblocks Adds Support for Solana Blockchain’s DeFi, NFT, Gaming Apps

Cryptocurrency custody technology provider Fireblocks has begun offering support for the Solana blockchain’s ecosystem of decentralized finance (DeFi) developers, non-fungible token (NFT) applications and other Web3 activities, the companies said on Tuesday.

Despite a bearish climate in crypto markets, Solana has grown at a rapid clip, particularly when it comes to things like NFTs, where it’s outpaced Ethereum of late, according to analysts at JPMorgan. While Solana places easily within the top 10 blockchains by usage and market capitalization, it’s really the second-largest ecosystem if you take all the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchains together, Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov said.

Fireblocks previously provided support for Solana’s native token SOL as well as stablecoins such as USDC on the network. Now, the the company's “Web3 Engine,” offers an on-steroids version of the platform’s key-sharding wallet technology to Solana users.

“It’s a very scalable wallet technology with a variety of use cases,” said Shaulov in an interview. “It could be used by an operations team to manage the treasury of the organization, or for Web3 retail applications, where a game can create wallets for its million users and serve them in a custodial way, with all the connectivity, controls and security to mint tokens and NFTs.”

Fireblocks connects to some 35 blockchain networks and works with an array of Web3 companies including Animoca, MoonPay, Xternity Games, Griffin Gaming, Wirex and Utopian Game Labs. The latest Solana integration uses WalletConnect V2, a protocol for bridging decentralized apps, upgraded to securely enable vault connections to non-EVM chain dapps, according to a press release.

The other important thing this integration does is push support for the WalletConnect2 protocol across the Solana ecosystem,” Shaulov said. “It’s just a much better, more secure and more scalable way to connect with decentralized applications. Before that you already had to do all kinds of proprietary, non-scalable solutions.”

UPDATE (Aug. 30, 2022 13:27 UTC): Adds "technology" to Fireblocks description. The firm provides software for custody, not custody services.