Understanding SPS: The Metric That Defines DeFi Development Corp.

To the outsider looking in, DeFi Development Corp. might look like it is just aggressively buying Solana’s native token, SOL. But to our shareholders, what we’re actually doing is more deliberate: we’re methodically growing SOL Per Share (SPS). 

As the leading Solana treasury strategy company, we’re laser-focused on increasing the amount of SOL we hold on our balance sheet relative to the number of DFDV shares outstanding. SPS is more than just a proprietary reporting metric for us - it defines how we allocate capital, influences which revenue streams we pursue, and defines our long-term success.

Given the nuance behind our next-generation crypto treasury strategy, SOL, and our SPS performance metric, understanding how and why we focus on SPS can help investors better understand our mission and strategy. In this blog post, we cover what SPS is, why it matters, how we’ve performed so far, and how market participants can track it in real time.

Setting The Stage: The NAV Premium

Before diving into SPS, it's essential to understand how and why crypto treasury companies are valued in the manner they are. In turn, it will become apparent how these companies can accumulate more cryptoassets, such as BTC or SOL.

Although crypto treasury companies are not structured like traditional investment funds or trusts, the market often evaluates them through a similar lens: by comparing their market cap to the value of their crypto holdings, less any liabilities (such as convertible bonds and/or other debt). This ratio is known as the Net Asset Value (NAV) multiple (“mNAV”). When a company trades above 1.0x NAV, it’s said to be trading at a premium to its NAV. Below 1.0x, the company trades at a discount to its NAV. As shown in Figure 1, Microstrategy’s MSTR stock has often traded at a premium to NAV, and over the past couple of years has traded between 2x - 3x NAV.

Why Do Crypto Treasury Companies Trade at a Premium?

While trading at 1.0x NAV is intuitive, premiums are less obvious. However, public market participants have historically assigned premiums to crypto treasury vehicles when they demonstrate structural advantages or strategic capabilities that go beyond passive asset holding. For a Solana-focused crypto treasury vehicle, these advantages can include:

• Active, Compounding Strategy: The company doesn’t just hold SOL, but grows SOL per share through validator operations, yield capture, and strategic acquisitions. Investors are willing to pay more than NAV because they believe an actively managed strategy will increase the underlying NAV, delivering future growth that passive holders can’t achieve independently.
  

• Capital Market Access: The company has access to public capital markets to raise accretive capital when conditions are favorable (e.g., at a premium). Investors recognize that they can scale SOL holdings faster than private entities or ETFs by using equity or debt issuance to capture spread (the difference between the stock price and the value of the underlying holdings) and increase SOL per share, creating compounding value for all shareholders.
  

• Yield Advantage Over ETFs: The company can earn staking and validator yield while ETFs merely track SOL price and will be unable to stake 100% of assets under management. Not only that, but these ETF issuers will be unable to use their own validators, thereby further guaranteeing underperformance. Investors pay a premium for yield-enhanced exposure, as every SOL earned through staking or validators increases shareholder value without relying solely on SOL price appreciation.
  

• Long-Term Accumulation Commitment: The company is able to permanently accumulate SOL without selling, providing amplified upside for long-term holders. Unlike ETFs that may rebalance or sell, their permanent holding posture maximizes potential upside, attracting investors who value conviction and long-term alignment.
  

• Operational Leverage Through Validators: The company has validator partnerships that result in generating fee-based SOL yield at scale. Unlike passive exposure vehicles, investors are willing to pay up for operational alpha, a scalable, fee-generating business that directly compounds NAV.
  

• Investor Optionality Across Capital Structure: The company offers multiple ways to engage with its growth and volatility, including equity, convertibles, options, or other structured products. Investors value flexibility and choice, and multiple instruments give investors different ways to participate in the SOL growth thesis, expanding the addressable investor base and reinforcing premium pricing.
  

• Expanded Access for Restricted Investors: Many institutional investors and funds face mandate restrictions that prevent them from buying cryptoassets or ETFs directly, but allow them to hold publicly traded equities. A crypto treasury company structured as a stock provides a compliant, regulated pathway to gain crypto exposure.
  

• Tax-Advantaged Exposure Pathway: Some investors cannot purchase crypto directly within tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs or 401(k)s. A crypto treasury company offers a workaround, allowing those investors to gain price and yield exposure within tax-sheltered structures.

Because the market often values crypto treasury companies on a NAV multiple basis, this allows companies to go out into the public market and issue new debt and/or equity without causing value destruction to existing shareholders. This is done when the number of newly acquired crypto treasury holdings results in more crypto on a per-share basis (like SPS). Consider Figure 2 below, which demonstrates the impact to shareholders when issuing equity under three different scenarios.

What Is SOL Per Share (SPS)?

SPS represents the amount of SOL held by DeFi Development Corp. divided by the shares outstanding; it tells investors how much SOL is equivalent to one share of DFDV stock. SPS can be thought of as the inverse of MicroStrategy’s “Bitcoin Yield” metric, which measures Bitcoin per share dilution over time. 

Other companies might focus on growing earnings, revenues, or asset diversity; our focus is to increase SPS over time. This approach fundamentally distinguishes our business model from other crypto vehicles, including ETFs or passive funds, where the amount of crypto represented per share typically degrades over time due to management fees.

Given that we’re a crypto treasury strategy that will leverage, amongst other things, public capital markets to issue debt and equity to raise capital to purchase SOL, a rising SPS indicates that we’re doing our job in increasing the amount of SOL that equates to a single DFDV share even in the face of issuing new stock (diluting ownership) and/or taking on debt. Put simply, our goal is that $1 invested in DFDV today earns more SOL exposure over time than buying $1 worth of SOL directly.

Since crypto treasury strategies have a history of trading above their NAV, market participants often state that the downside of a crypto treasury strategy stock is limited; the stock will be valued at the market value of their underlying treasury holdings. Said differently, the downside of a SOL treasury strategy is believed to be that $1 invested in the stock only ever equates to being worth the same as $1 invested in SOL instead, should the stock, at worst, trade at NAV. 

Take, for instance, Microstrategy’s own BTC Per Share (BPS), which can be calculated by taking total BTC treasury holdings divided by MSTR’s assumed diluted shares outstanding. If you were to purchase BTC on the same day that Microstrategy made its very first BTC purchase, you would have the same amount of BTC today. However, on a BPS basis, ownership of 1 MSTR’s share would equate to +970% more BTC. In other words, Microstrategy has historically been a better way of profiting from BTC appreciation than holding BTC outright.

Interpreting & Measuring SPS Growth

We make it easy for the market to track our SPS performance in real-time on our website via our SPS dashboard. This provides full visibility into total SOL held, shares outstanding, current SPS calculation, and our historical SPS performance. When interpreting SPS, investors should consider:

• Growth in SPS over time as a sign of successful execution
  

• Accretive capital raises that increase SOL without unnecessary dilution
  

• Validator revenue and staking yield contributions as operational proof of value creation
  

• Long-term alignment between management and shareholders through this single, transparent metric.

Since launching our Solana accumulation strategy, we’ve steadily increased SPS through a combination of:

• Direct SOL purchases using proceeds from Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE) financing, At-The-Market (ATM) offerings, and convertible bond offerings
  

• Earning native staking rewards through validator operations
  

• Capturing market opportunities through OTC and locked SOL acquisitions.

As shown in Figure 4, our efforts have resulted in SPS growing from 0.001 SOL on April 7, 2025, to today’s current reading of 0.042 SOL. Although having made considerable progress in a short period, our focus remains on hitting our very first SPS target of 0.143 SOL per share.

How We Plan To Drive SPS Growth

With SPS being a perfect key performance metric for DeFi Dev Corp. and its shareholders, given our newly implemented treasury strategy, we’re constantly working to grow SPS and identify new growth engines. Though we expect to tap public capital markets to fuel SPS expansion, we believe deeply in growing SPS by aggressively tapping into other revenue streams and opportunities, such as our validator business, staking, purchasing discounted SOL, value-add partnerships, and more. It is these efforts that we believe will ultimately enable SPS to grow faster than anyone else, even without the use of capital markets.

We’re so dedicated to expanding SPS that we recently implemented a new executive and employee compensation structure whereby bonuses are tied to three different SPS tiers. Figure 5 below shows the various SPS ranges and the respective bonus payout for DeFi Dev Corp. employees.

While we won’t go into every tactical detail around how we plan to grow SPS, our strategy for increasing SPS is built on several core drivers:

1. Validator Operations: Following our most recent acquisition, DeFi Dev Corp. runs our own Solana validators, earning native SOL yield that is compounded back into our treasury, directly enhancing SPS. Our validator business makes for a flywheel whereby generating staking yield and validator income in the form of SOL results in more SOL moved back into the DeFi Dev Corp. treasury, where we can then stake SOL with DeFi Dev Corp. to earn the maximum amount of SOL and thus increase total treasury holdings.
   

   

   Figure 5: SPS Compensation Incentive

2. Strategic Capital Raises: We plan to continue leveraging tools like At-the-Market (ATM) offerings, convertible bonds, equity line of credit (ELOC), and secondary stock offerings to raise capital during favorable market conditions. Proceeds will be used to acquire additional SOL, all while ensuring accretive SPS growth for shareholders.
   

3. Operational Leverage & Partnerships: Our partnerships with major players, such as Kraken and BONK, position us to scale our validator business and expand SOL yield opportunities. We intend on continuing to secure major strategic partnerships to drive value back to shareholders.
   

4. Disciplined Treasury Management: We continuously evaluate the most efficient ways to deploy capital to maximize long-term SPS growth while maintaining shareholder alignment.

Closing Thoughts

As the public markets begin to recognize the value of actively managed crypto treasury vehicles, we believe our proprietary SPS metric will become the defining metric for measuring our success in this emerging category. We invite all market participants to follow our SPS progress and evaluate our performance through this lens. Given our mission, vision, and strategy, we believe that focusing on SPS growth is the most aligned, transparent, and effective way to build lasting shareholder value.

_{Disclaimer: This is for informational purposes only and reflects publicly announced developments, milestones, and media coverage related to DeFi Development Corp. (“the Company”). The information contained herein does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor should it be relied upon as investment advice or a recommendation regarding any securities. Certain statements in this post may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of publication. DeFi Development Corp. undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. All information is accurate as of the date posted and is subject to change without notice.}