#506: Marco Santori, CEO of Solmate, on Inventing The SAFT Framework, Solana, The Infrastructure Flywheel Strategy, and The Geographical Importance of The UAE

The Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) emerged in November 2017 when Marco Santori and his team rewrote the existing SAFE template to accommodate crypto assets. By replacing equity language with token terminology and adding investor‑ and consumer‑rights safeguards, the SAFT offered a legally‑sound alternative to the predatory ICO models that dominated early 2018. The framework quickly became a market standard, providing venture capitalists a clear contract for token sales and giving regulators a reference point for compliance. Its continued use underscores how a well‑crafted legal instrument can shape an entire industry’s fundraising practices.

Building on that regulatory foundation, Santori launched Soulmate, an infrastructure‑focused company built on Solana’s high‑throughput, low‑latency blockchain. The firm bets on tokenization moving onto permission‑less ledgers, positioning Solana as the preferred layer for decentralized finance, asset tokenization, and real‑time settlement. Crucially, Soulmate chose the United Arab Emirates as its operational hub, exploiting the country’s central geographic location between North America, Europe and Asia. This reduces round‑trip latency for cross‑regional order‑book matching and validation, creating a “flywheel” effect where faster transaction processing attracts more liquidity, reinforcing Solana’s network effects and the company’s revenue model.

The strategy attracted a $300 million oversubscribed private placement backed by the Pulsar Group, ARK Invest and ARK’s Cathie Wood, providing capital to pair a sizable treasury with proprietary infrastructure. Soulmate’s partnership with Rockaway X—covering validator hardware, market‑making liquidity and asset‑management services—culminated in a merger term sheet that will unify treasury operations with on‑chain execution. For enterprise investors, this model promises predictable EBITDA and revenue streams, moving beyond the volatile MNAV metric that plagues traditional crypto treasuries. As Solana’s ecosystem expands in 2026, Soulmate’s UAE‑centric, infrastructure‑first approach positions it to capture emerging tokenization demand across global markets.