Solana DvP, announced on October 6, provides a standard escrow framework and application programming interface intended to replace bespoke smart contracts that institutions have needed for onchain settlements. The program is released under the MIT licence and has undergone an external security audit by Cantina.
The system places the two legs of a trade into separate escrow accounts and allows a designated settlement authority to release both in one transaction. If either leg cannot complete, neither transfer takes effect, reducing principal risk when an asset and its payment move at different times.
J. P. Morgan provided input on securities-settlement practices and institutional requirements. The Solana Foundation stressed that the bank’s role was limited to providing that input and did not amount to designing, developing, operating, approving, endorsing or guaranteeing the program.
Catherine Gu, head of product for digital assets at the Solana Foundation, said the program gives institutions an open standard across the Solana ecosystem and targets finality in seconds rather than days. Rhodel D’Souza, J. P. Morgan’s head of markets digital assets, said a shared standard for atomic delivery-versus-payment was foundational infrastructure for institutions seeking to operate at scale while limiting settlement risk and counterparty exposure.
Delivery versus payment is a core securities-settlement mechanism under which delivery of an asset is conditional on payment. The Foundation said market infrastructure can involve clearing houses, depositories and custodians, with capital tied up for one to two days. Solana DvP is intended to compress the exchange itself into one blockchain transaction.
Under the program, parties first record the trade terms onchain, including the counterparties, assets, amounts, settlement authority and expiry. Each side then funds its own escrow using an ordinary token transfer. The settlement authority, which can be a bank, custodian, exchange or another agreed agent, signs the transaction that releases both legs.
The authority cannot redirect the proceeds because settlement destinations are fixed when the trade is created. Before settlement, either party can reclaim its own leg, while cancellation or rejection mechanisms return escrowed assets to their owners. The program also supports an earliest settlement time and blocks settlement after an agreed expiry.
Solana’s documentation says the framework supports both SPL Token and Token-2022 assets, and a trade can combine tokens using the two standards. It accommodates features used by regulated issuers, including permanent delegates, pausable tokens and transfer hooks, although some Token-2022 extensions, including transfer fees, interest-bearing tokens, scaled user-interface amounts and non-transferable tokens, are rejected.
The program does not provide matching, price discovery, an order book, netting or partial fills. It is bilateral, requires both legs to exist as token accounts on Solana and does not itself perform eligibility or know-your-customer checks. A payment remaining on conventional financial rails must be settled separately and reconciled.
Creating a trade record is permissionless, however, so the documentation warns that the record itself is not evidence that the named parties agreed to its terms. Participants are expected to verify the counterparties, token mints, amounts, destinations, authority and timing before funding or settlement. The program removes the risk of one trade leg moving without the other, but it does not eliminate issuer credit or redemption risk, nor the possibility that authorised token controls could affect assets held in escrow.
The program charges no protocol fee beyond network transaction costs and account rent.
Solana DvP is deployed on mainnet and devnet under the same program address. Documentation dated October 2 describes the program as upgradeable and says each trade creates a record and two escrow accounts. The settlement authority is the only signer permitted to settle, while counterparties retain mechanisms to reclaim funds or reject a trade.
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