Institutional-grade cryptocurrency infrastructure received twin upgrades this week as a major blockchain network rolled out a new settlement standard with guidance from a global banking giant, while a leading exchange operator linked with a regional bank to offer uninterrupted fiat access.
Solana has debuted an open-source Delivery versus Payment (DvP) program designed to let institutions settle trades atomically directly on the network, achieving finality in seconds rather than the multiday timelines common in traditional settlement rails, according to Decrypt. The standard was developed with input from J.P. Morgan, signaling continued convergence between legacy finance workflows and distributed-ledger technology. Atomic settlement via DvP ensures that the transfer of assets and the corresponding payment occur simultaneously, eliminating the lag between delivery and payment that introduces counterparty risk in conventional clearing models. By releasing the program as open-source software, Solana aims to provide a common framework that trading venues, custodians, and asset issuers can adopt without building proprietary settlement layers from scratch.
The launch addresses a long-standing bottleneck in digital-asset markets: even as trading happens continuously across global time zones, back-office settlement often relies on batch processes and legacy correspondent banking schedules that can stretch across multiple business days. Solana’s DvP implementation leverages the chain’s high-throughput architecture to compress that timeline to seconds, potentially allowing institutions to reuse capital more quickly and reduce settlement-related exposures during periods of market volatility.
On the same day, Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, announced a partnership with Singapore Gulf Bank to activate 24/7 institutional dollar rails, CryptoSlate reported. Through the SGB Net link, eligible institutional clients in supported jurisdictions can now access round-the-clock US-dollar funding, removing the constraints of traditional banking hours that have historically complicated weekend and holiday liquidity management for crypto markets. The arrangement extends beyond standard account connectivity by targeting the specific needs of institutional treasuries that require continuous fiat on- and off-ramps to support algorithmic strategies, derivatives margining, and over-the-counter settlements. Singapore Gulf Bank also indicated that customer-trade pricing is planned for release in coming months, which could further integrate the bank’s services into institutional trading workflows.
Both initiatives reflect a broader shift in which infrastructure is being purpose-built for institutional capital rather than retrofitted from retail-oriented platforms. Legacy financial institutions and regulated crypto-native firms are increasingly collaborating on open standards and dedicated banking networks that mirror the uptime expectations of global digital-asset markets. The combination of atomic blockchain settlement and always-on fiat liquidity channels suggests that the plumbing connecting traditional balance sheets to on-chain economies is deepening, even as regulatory frameworks continue to evolve across jurisdictions.