Hamilton Lane becomes 1st asset manager to launch fund on Solana

Alternative investment management firm Hamilton Lane has announced the launch of the first private credit fund on the Solana blockchain.

Investors now have access to the asset manager’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, or SCOPE, on Solana (SOL). This makes Hamilton Lane the first major investment manager to put its funds on the blockchain.

Hamilton Lane partners with Libre

The milestone is a collaboration between Hamilton Lane and Libre, a Web3 protocol backed by Brevan Howard and Nomura, which will allow Hamilton Lane to mine and distribute its funds on-chain using the Web3 protocol’s technology, a press release said on Tuesday.

Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at the Solana Foundation, said the integration and launch of SCOPE on blockchain are important steps towards democratizing finance.

This is critical to making corporate finance accessible to more investors, away from its traditional focus on “high-net-worth individuals.”

“Libre’s announcement of an on-chain fund with Hamilton Lane and Brevan Howard—two stalwarts of alternative investing—is another revelation in the changing democratization of finance. Bringing real-world assets on-chain provides greater flexibility and access to investors around the world,” Ducoff said in a blog post.

Blockchain adoption increases with RWA growth

Hamilton Lane and Libre’s announcement adds to a growing trend that has seen some of the world’s investment giants turn to blockchain to tokenize funds. This new shift has created a massive marketplace where real-world assets (RWAs) now come on-chain, including from the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.

According to Ducoff, on-chain RWAs generally represent traditional securities such as private funds, money market funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

RWAs also relate to financial assets that include “tokenized (or tied to an on-chain asset)” private loans and real estate.

Key players for Libre and Solana

Libre provides the infrastructure that companies can leverage to deliver these RWAs to users, with additional benefits including trading and collateralized lending.

Solana, meanwhile, is a “low-latency” network with high throughput capacity that companies are increasingly looking to tokenize.

It is stated that Hamilton Lane previously tokenized the SCOPE fund on US-based digital securities issuance platform Securitize.

Securitize is the transfer agent and broker for BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund called BUIDL, which became the first fund to reach a market cap of $500 million just four months after its launch.