Pye

Pye (also referred to as Pye Finance) builds decentralized finance infrastructure for Solana validators and their stakers. Its core product, Pye Exchange, is described by the company as the first orderbook for staking rewards and locked SOL, providing a market for each participating validator where stakers can sell future staking rewards for immediate, on-chain-settled SOL, and where buyers can purchase SOL at a discount sourced directly from stakers. A second product, the Rewards Widget, is an embeddable interface that validators can place in their own app or site (or use as a dedicated page hosted on pye.fi) so their delegators can trade rewards under the validator's brand.

The company is developing an upgrade that would let validators set parameters such as lockups and reward flows, and tokenize a locked staking position into two assets: a principal token redeemable for the underlying SOL at the end of the term, and a rewards token representing staking rewards payable at maturity. Pye says this structure lets stakers sell exposure to future rewards or deploy positions in other DeFi strategies while remaining staked. Pye's documentation frames its audience in three groups: stakers (new utility around stake and better returns), buyers and traders (DeFi strategies around stake and the ability to purchase SOL below market cost), and validators (predictable stake, new revenue streams, and tools to manage, retain and attract stake).

Pye states its platform is live on Solana mainnet and is non-custodial: stake never leaves the user's control and settlement is enforced on-chain. The website advertises a forthcoming product promising up to 2X APY on stake, accessible via a waitlist.

Founding story

Pye was founded by Erik Ashdown and Alberto Cevallos. Ashdown, co-founder, has described validators as "the underbanked layer of Web3" and the company's aim as building financial infrastructure that lets validators operate like asset managers, offering structured products, predictable returns and greater transparency for stakers.

Business model

Pye operates an on-chain marketplace and distribution layer for staking-related assets on Solana, serving validators as a channel to their delegators. Its documentation includes a "Fees & Economics" section, but the sources provided do not specify fee levels or revenue splits.

Not specified in the available sources; the documentation references a fees and economics framework for the markets and orderbook without disclosing rates.

Traction

The company says its platform is live on Solana mainnet, that it completed a closed alpha in 2025 and planned a private beta for Q1 2026. The website displays counters for orderbook markets, validators onboarded and independent audits, but the retrieved page renders these values as zero/placeholder, so no onboarding figures can be confirmed.

Latest developments

December 2025: $5 million seed round announced, led by Variant and Coinbase Ventures with participation from Solana Labs, Nascent, Gemini and others. The company is developing validator-configurable lockups and reward flows plus principal/reward tokenization, with a private beta targeted for Q1 2026 and an unreleased product advertised as offering up to 2X APY.