Hamilton Lane, an alternative investment management firm, has announced the launch of the first private credit fund on the Solana blockchain.

Investors can now access the asset manager’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund or SCOPE on Solana (SOL). This makes Hamilton Lane the first major investment manager to put its funds on the blockchain network.  

Hamilton Lane partners with Libre

A press release on Tuesday noted that the milestone is a collaboration between Hamilton Lane and Libre, a Brevan Howard and Nomura-backed Web3 protocol. The partnership will allow Hamilton Lane to leverage the Web3 protocol’s technology to issue and distribute its funds on-chain.

Nick Ducoff, the head of institutional growth at Solana Foundation, noted that the integration and launch of SCOPE on the blockchain are major steps in the quest to democratize finance.

This is crucial in bringing institutional finance to more investors, away from the traditional focus on “high-net-worth individuals.”

“Libre’s announcement of an onchain fund with Hamilton Lane and Brevan Howard – two stalwarts of alternative investments – is yet another revelation in the changing democratization of finance. Bringing real world assets onchain provides more flexibility and access to investors around the world,” Ducoff said in a blog post.

Growing embrace of blockchain amid RWA growth

The announcement by Hamilton Lane and Libre adds to a growing trend that has led some of the world’s investment behemoths to turn to blockchain to tokenize funds. This new shift has created a major market where real-world assets (RWAs) are now coming on-chain, including from the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.

According to Ducoff, onchain RWAs broadly represent traditional securities such as private funds, money market funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

RWAs also relate to financial assets that include private credit and real estate that is “tokenized (or linked to an onchain asset).”

Libre and Solana key players

Libre offers the infrastructure that firms can tap into to bring these RWAs to users, with additional benefits including trading and collateralized lending.

Meanwhile, Solana is a “low latency” network that boasts high throughput capability, which companies increasingly seek for tokenization.

Notably, Hamilton Lane has previously tokenized its SCOPE fund on Securitize, a U.S.-based digital securities issuance platform.

Securitize is the transfer agent and broker-dealer for BlackRock’s BUIDL, a tokenized money market fund that recently became the first to hit the $500 million market cap just four months after its launch.