Each month, we explore one founder’s journey of building on Solana, as well as noteworthy network updates to help you get up to speed.

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In this episode of Solana Sessions, we sat down with the brains behind tokenization platform Sunrise, Saeed Badreg. As co-founder and CEO of Wormhole Labs, Badreg explained how the project helps asset issuers gain distribution and reach users across blockchains, with a particular focus on the Solana ecosystem. Saeed explains why the team built Sunrise as a turnkey solution for projects struggling to penetrate closed blockchain ecosystems, and how Wormhole's Native Token Transfer (NTT) framework enables assets to move across chains without wrapped tokens or fragmented liquidity.

He walks through the difference between wrapped and native tokens, why provenance and trust matter more than marketing terminology, and how Sunrise launched with Monad's MON token, among others, to provide day-one liquidity on Solana. The conversation covers why global institutions are accelerating crypto adoption faster than expected, how countries are modeling regulatory frameworks after the US Genius Act and pending Clarity Act, when price discovery for major assets will move onchain, and Saeed's three-part framework for evaluating teams.

This episode is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. Check out the accompanying podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Incubated by Wormhole Labs, Sunrise helps bring tokenized assets onto the Solana blockchain with an eye towards encouraging assets to be traded across chains. 

Badreg said Sunrise was created because non-native tokens often struggle to reach users on different chains. “One of the big challenges was distribution and being able to take a native token to other blockchains, other markets, other users,” he said. 

Sunrise aims to bridge that gap by supporting both native and wrapped token listings. The platform has already allowed projects like Monad, Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Infinix, to expand their native tokens to different blockchains. “[For Monad, we enabled] liquidity since day one on Solana, which had never been done before,” Badreg said. “[For existing tokens, like Hyperliquid], we wanted to bring it over to Solana, while still making it exciting with a deep market that does tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of volume every day.”

A key goal for the platform is to make tokens accessible to more users, Badreg said. “You should make it easy for everyone who’s actually paying attention to end up becoming a token holder, because the token holder actually has a lot of skin in the game.” 

In addition to expanding accessibility, Sunrise also aims to reduce the need for centralized exchanges by enabling onchain price discovery and liquidity. “People have always said the real flipping is when price discovery is onchain versus on centralized exchanges,” Badreg said. “If you start to see price discovery happen for bitcoin onchain, it’s going to be hard to argue why I need centralized exchanges.”

Alongside crypto-native assets, Sunrise wants to bring traditional financial assets, like equities or commodities, to Solana as well. “We’re focused on bringing certain kinds of equities, securities, and commodities onchain,” Badreg said. “We have a lot of experience working with regulators and making sure it is compliant. So for us, it’s 100% part of our roadmap, and will be an ever-growing piece of our launches and volumes onchain.”

These metrics concern Sunrise assets on Solana, and are accurate at the time of publication.

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.