Solana Research Institute Estimates $11.2B of FMI Revenue Could Survive Onchain Shift

The back office of global finance generates billions of dollars through trading, clearing and settlement services that are largely invisible to end users. A new report from the Solana Research Institute (SRI) argues that moving this work onto public blockchains could significantly reduce the revenue captured by today’s financial market infrastructure providers.

A $31.5 Billion Revenue Pool

SRI estimates that global financial market infrastructure represents an annual revenue pool of $31.5 billion. In an “unprotected” onchain transition—one in which regulators do not shield existing operators—the institute projects that incumbents would retain approximately $11.2 billion.

The remaining $20.3 billion would instead flow to users and new competitors through lower costs. The figure is not presented as revenue that blockchains automatically capture. Rather, it represents the value that could be released as competition and more efficient settlement systems reduce fees across financial markets.

The report’s central estimate differs slightly from a social media post that described the surviving traditional infrastructure revenue as just over $10.5 billion. SRI’s detailed breakdown places the retained amount at $11.2 billion out of the total $31.5 billion pool.

Trading Faces the Greatest Disruption

SRI sees trading as the most exposed segment of the existing infrastructure industry. The institute assigns $13 billion in annual revenue to trading and treats the entire amount as vulnerable to competition from onchain markets.

Clearing is expected to prove more resilient. The report values clearing revenue at $10 billion and estimates that approximately $6.8 billion could survive an onchain shift. Clearing providers manage counterparty default risk by standing between buyers and sellers, a role SRI argues will remain important for longer-duration trades even when transactions settle on blockchains.

The report also identifies four potential areas for new onchain businesses:

• Cross-venue collateral pooling, allowing traders to use shared collateral across multiple platforms.
• Prediction market clearing, applying default-management functions to markets tied to real-world outcomes.
• High-value cross-border payment settlement assets, designed to finalize large international payments onchain.
• Multi-stablecoin acceptance infrastructure, helping businesses accept several stablecoins without managing each integration separately.

What This Means

For Solana and other public-chain ecosystems, the report frames financial infrastructure as a sizable opportunity for cost reduction and new competition rather than guaranteed protocol revenue. Lower fees could benefit users and create room for specialized builders, but intense competition may also prevent those builders from capturing all of the value they create.

The word “unprotected” is critical to SRI’s estimate. Regulation, licensing requirements and efforts to preserve incumbent roles could materially change the outcome. Still, the report offers a clear strategic thesis: if public blockchains gain a larger role in financial-market plumbing, the biggest economic shift may be the redistribution of existing infrastructure costs rather than the creation of an entirely new revenue pool.