Despite Solana’s token price facing substantial pressure this year, a contrasting signal is emerging from institutional investment channels. The ecosystem is recording significant capital inflows, bolstered by a key technical upgrade on the Jupiter platform, even amid broader market weakness. This divergence between negative price action and fundamental infrastructure growth is becoming increasingly pronounced.
Professional Investors Accumulate Against the Grain
The behavior of professional market participants is particularly noteworthy. According to the latest data from CoinShares, Solana investment products attracted inflows of $31 million in the week ending February 13. This occurred during a period where crypto funds overall suffered outflows exceeding $3.7 billion, with major assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum seeing substantial capital exit.
US spot ETFs are also demonstrating resilience. On February 17, these products recorded net inflows, led by the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF. The cumulative historical net inflow volume for all SOL spot ETFs is now approaching the $900 million mark.
A Billion-Dollar Liquidity Catalyst
A central driver for this institutional interest is a structural change within Solana’s DeFi sector. The leading DEX aggregator, Jupiter, activated a new feature on February 16, 2026. It allows users to natively stake SOL and use those positions directly as collateral for loans. Previously, investors often had to undertake cumbersome conversions into liquid staking tokens or endure multi-day unbonding periods to access their capital.
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This innovation has the potential to dramatically boost capital efficiency across the network. Estimates suggest approximately $30.5 billion is locked in native staking positions, capital that was largely inaccessible to the DeFi market until now. With the ability to borrow against these assets at loan-to-value ratios of up to 87%, this vast pool of capital can become liquid without severing the direct staking relationship with validators.
Price Action Lags Behind Fundamentals
These positive fundamental developments stand in sharp contrast to current price performance. The Solana price is currently trading at $81.35, having lost nearly 36% of its value since the start of the year. Technical pressure remains high, with the price trading well below both its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Market observers interpret the discrepancy between institutional inflows and the falling price as an indication that long-term oriented players are using depressed valuations to build positions, while short-term traders exit the market.
Strategic Focus on Asian Markets
Concurrently, Solana is strengthening its positioning as an infrastructure layer for traditional finance, with a particular focus on Asia. At the “Accelerate APAC” conference in Hong Kong, representatives from asset managers including Mirae Asset and ChinaAMC discussed utilizing Solana for tokenized securities and stablecoin payment rails.
Conclusion
The combination of the new liquidity mechanism via Jupiter and persistent ETF inflows suggests Solana’s infrastructure continues to expand independently of the current price trend. Whether this fundamental strength is sufficient to reverse the downward trajectory established since January will depend significantly on the adoption rate of the new lending functionality in the coming weeks.
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