The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.

SOL Strategies said Tuesday it has completed its previously announced acquisition of Darklake Labs, closing a deal that brings the team behind the Solana (CRYPTO: $SOL) native Zyga privacy system into the company. 

Darklake developed Zyga as a zero-knowledge proof system built for Solana that enables private transaction execution while aiming to eliminate front-running and sandwich attacks at the point of execution. As part of the closing, Darklake’s founders and core team have joined SOL Strategies.

The deal gives SOL Strategies more than just another ecosystem asset to back. It moves the company further into the technology layer of the Solana economy at a time when privacy, execution quality and application infrastructure are becoming harder to separate from the broader investment story around the network. 

More From Cryptoprowl:

Ripple, The Company Behind XRP, Is Valued At $50 Billion

Eightco Secures $125 Million Investment From Bitmine And ARK Invest, Shares Surge

Blockchain Projects Decline 75% As Developers Shift To A.I.

Stanley Druckenmiller Says Stablecoins Could Reshape Global Finance

New York Stock Exchange Invests $600 Million In Polymarket

In that sense, completing the acquisition says as much about where SOL Strategies wants to sit in the stack as it does about the asset it bought.

SOL Strategies said the acquisition closed for $1.2 million, made up of $200,000 in cash and 1,047,156 common shares, with the stock portion valued at $1 million based on the company’s five-day volume-weighted average price on the Canadian Securities Exchange before closing. Those shares are subject to a four-month statutory lock-up.   The structure keeps the deal relatively modest in size, but it gives SOL Strategies direct ownership of technology it appears to see as useful for a more hands-on product and infrastructure strategy.

“Privacy is a core functionality needed to bring global finance on-chain, and this acquisition continues our mission to support the Solana economy as we take a more active role in technology development,” CEO Michael Hubbard said in the release.   That framing fits the broader signal here: for Solana-focused companies, the next phase of competition may increasingly come down to who owns the tooling that helps the network handle more sophisticated financial activity.

SOL Strategies Inc. (NASDAQ: $STKE) stock is currently trading at $1.11 U.S. per share.