Solana Research Institute: Only $11.2B of $31.5B Market Infra Revenue Survives Onchain

The Solana Research Institute estimates that only $11.2 billion of the $31.5 billion in global annual revenue earned by financial market infrastructure would remain with incumbent operators if that activity migrated to public blockchains without regulatory protection. The Switzerland-based not-for-profit published the findings in a report dated October 30, 2026, and promoted them on X on November 10, 2026.

The remaining $20.3 billion, by SRI's arithmetic, would pass to end users and new competitors through lower costs rather than accrue automatically to blockchain operators. The figure depends entirely on the report's "unprotected" scenario: an assumption that regulators take no steps to shield existing exchanges, clearing houses and settlement systems during a transition.

How the revenue pool breaks down

SRI splits the $31.5 billion FMI pool into streams with different exposure profiles. Trading faces the greatest risk. The institute treats the $13 billion in annual trading revenue as fully at risk for incumbents, arguing that competition among onchain markets would pull the entire slice away from current venue operators.

Clearing tells a different story. SRI pegs clearing revenue at $10 billion and projects roughly $6.8 billion of it would withstand an onchain transition. Clearing involves standing between counterparties and absorbing losses when one side fails to deliver. The report reasons that longer-dated trades still require an entity to manage that default risk, blockchain or not.

A post on X promoting the findings framed the surviving share as just over $10.5 billion of traditional infrastructure revenue under an unprotected shift onchain. The report's own breakdown lands at $11.2 billion retained out of $31.5 billion.

Where new revenue could form

SRI identifies four categories of onchain services that could each generate single-digit billions of dollars annually:

• Cross-venue collateral pooling, letting traders post one pool of collateral across multiple platforms instead of segregated deposits at each venue.
• Prediction market clearing, applying default-management functions to markets where participants bet on real-world outcomes.
• High-value cross-border payment settlement assets, onchain instruments used to finalize large international transfers.
• Multi-stablecoin acceptance infrastructure, tooling that lets a business accept several stablecoins without operating separate integrations for each.

Each category would constitute a meaningful business if the projections materialize, according to the report.

Who produced the numbers

SRI is a Switzerland-based not-for-profit founded in April 2026. Its membership roster includes Angus Scott, former head of innovation at Euroclear, alongside the Solana Foundation, Jito, R3, Figment, Helius and Alchemy.

That composition blends traditional market-plumbing experience with firms deeply embedded in the Solana ecosystem. Readers should weigh the analysis in that light: the authors hold a clear interest in financial activity moving onto public chains.

What the estimate does and does not claim

The $20.3 billion at-risk figure functions as a sizing exercise for public-chain builders. It frames the opportunity as savings passed to users plus room for new entrants, not as revenue that blockchains capture by default. Lower costs are a real benefit for market participants, but competition — the very force driving those savings — offers no guarantee of profits for whoever builds the new rails.

The load-bearing assumption is regulatory inaction. If supervisors move to protect incumbent clearing houses and trading venues, or to impose licensing regimes on onchain alternatives, the retained-revenue math changes in the incumbents' favor. SRI's four proposed service lines will test that assumption as builders attempt to convert projected billions into contracted revenue over the coming market-structure cycle.