Astra Fintech, a global blockchain payments provider, has launched a $100 million fund to support the Solana ecosystem’s growth throughout Asia, according to an April 21 announcement.
Through the fund, Astra Fintech plans to deploy capital to accelerate projects and form partnerships with developers, companies, and regulators. The fund’s base of operations will be in South Korea, a country Solana’s venture arm invested in after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022.
The fund will focus on projects and developers working on PayFi solutions — a conglomeration of systems that use blockchain technology to facilitate payments. Astra’s main suite of products attempts to blend traditional finance with digital currencies.
According to data from Electric Capital, Solana and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) blockchains are currently within the top 10 blockchains for developer activity, only behind Ethereum.
In 2021, Solana created a $5 million development fund to spur projects in Southeast Asia. The region is a hotspot for Web3 games, a crypto use case that has proliferated on Solana due to the blockchain’s fast speeds and low transaction costs.
Solana, with its ups and downs
The Solana ecosystem has had quite the ride in 2025. Its native token, Solana (SOL), rose to an all-time high of $293.31 on Jan. 19, two days after US incoming President Donald Trump launched a memecoin on the network. It trades at $136.61 at this writing, a fall of 53.4% since then.
However, crypto executives and companies continue betting on the Solana ecosystem. On April 7, a group of former Kraken executives acquired Janover, aiming to transform the real estate firm into a de facto Solana treasury. Just weeks later, Upexi — a brand management and supply chain company — saw its shares surge 630% on April 21 after announcing a similar strategy. Meanwhile, Canada approved SOL staking in early April, and ARK Invest has since added exposure to Solana funds through its tech-focused ETFs.
Magazine: X Hall of Flame: Solana ‘will be a trillion-dollar asset’ — Mert Mumtaz
