Last year was our best year yet. Protocol gross profit more than tripled (+226% YoY) from $1.79M to $5.8M USD. Our TVL doubled (+96% YoY), making us the largest liquid staking protocol on Solana, and 3rd-largest protocol overall by TVL.
Today, Sanctum is responsible for around 2.5% of all SOL in circulation. It is our responsibility to be good stewards of the protocol, so that the hundreds of thousands of people who hold SOL with Sanctum can continue to do so without worry that the protocol might have to shut down one day.
Amongst startup founders, especially those in our space, it is common to "go big or go home": raise a ton of money, try to blow up the company one way or another, and if it doesn't work spin the roulette wheel and try again. We are quite contrarian here. I believe that Sanctum can become our life's work. I believe good people compound exponentially with more years on the job, and it is a colossal waste (not to mention a significant dislocation to people's lives) to have to reset it all. Therefore, we will prioritise strong fiscal discipline, even as we pursue growth. In 2025, we were profitable and cashflow positive, and we look to continue this in 2026 as well despite the downturn.
There are significant headwinds in 2026 due to the crypto market downturn. While TVL continues to grow in SOL terms, the SOL downturn has cut projected revenues significantly. But in every crisis, there is opportunity. Our fiscal position makes this a good opportunity to expand our business. We are focused on two things in 2026:
- Growing our core business
- Building up Sanctum App
Sanctum currently manages around 2.5% of all SOL in circulation. The total addressable market for yield-bearing SOL (a $70B market) extends far beyond our current success. We continue to see a huge opportunity to grow our core business and capture more of the market.
In 2026, we will focus on three things: continuing to improve our product by providing deeper liquidity and lower fees, onboarding more and more institutions under the Sanctum umbrella, and rolling out a new core primitive in Q1 2026 that will serve the needs of many more partners.
Secondly, the Sanctum App. I want to explain our thinking behind this move.
We are contrarian by nature. Three years ago, the received wisdom was that LSTs were winner-take-all and only one LST could win. Our bet at the time was that if we allow anyone to spin up their own LST and build a unified liquidity layer to service them, that we would see a Cambrian explosion of LSTs. Today, there are hundreds of different LSTs. We have defined the category and changed the meta.
We are taking a similarly contrarian bet with the Sanctum App. Everyone is building the everything app. And to a man, apps today encourage people to make impulsive decisions and exploit users' desire for quick wins: "buy memecoins with max leverage and aim for the next 100x". We hold two contrarian beliefs. First, that most users should not avail themselves of the many ways to lose money in crypto (perps, max leverage, memecoins). Rather, they should hold good assets for the long term. And second, that building to nudge users towards becoming more patient, judicious, and long-term will earn us their support and loyalty.
Crypto currently selects for the short-term and risk-loving. Binance currently has 25 million funded accounts, 0.3% of the world's population. A product that gives 99.7% of the world access to the internet capital markets, while being value-aligned with people in the "real world", has immense potential.
Regardless of how difficult 2026 could be with the broader crypto markets, we’ve navigated such situations before in 2022 and are heading confidently into the year. This time, we have a stronger product, a stronger team, and a stronger fiscal position. I look forward to this year.