CHAD preferred climbs toward $10 as DeFi Development common falls 21% in a week

Purchases ran ~101,381 $SOL in mid-September, worth ~$11.4 million, then 47,706, then 26,203 and now 22,070 $SOL tokens worth close to $2.4 million.

“Short-term volatility has not changed our conviction or our commitment to accumulating $SOL,” CEO Joseph Onorati said in the release. He cited tokenized equities trading on Solana and Samsung’s plan to add stablecoin functionality to 82 million U.S. Galaxy devices.

DFDV shares declined about 4.2% on Monday and ~21% for the week. The stock at around $4.32 gives the company a market value of around $141 million.

DFDV was born Janover, a real estate software company. In April 2025, it switched to Solana and grounded its strategy in Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury playbook.

In February, Cryptopolitan reported that DFDV held around 2.2 million $SOL, which was worth about $184 million at that time, but the market cap was only $96 million. Its preliminary third quarter estimates, issued October 5, revealed cash more than doubling and net asset value per share up over 100% since August.

Preferred stock pays 13% and set records through October 9

CHAD (Nasdaq: CHAD) is DFDV’s variable-rate perpetual preferred stock. The security never matures and pays out before common shareholders.

It pays a 13% annual dividend on the $10 stated amount or $1.30 per share each year. Payments are made out every business day when declared.

CHAD paid its first dividend on October 1. The release warns that staking and validator rewards “may be insufficient to support dividend payments.”

CHAD was hitting record highs during the week into October 9, and is closing in on $10 as $SOL pulled back. Investors are “recognizing its distinct income proposition,” said Dan Kang, chief strategy officer.

CHAD “can support accretive $SOL per share growth without issuing additional common shares,” Kang said.

CHAD’s September IPO priced at $8, below its own $10 stated amount, so the move toward par is as much a recovery as it is a breakout.

On October 6, DFDV sanctioned a program to buy back CHAD stock if it trades below par. Part of the cash to purchase $SOL comes from a $300 million CHAD at-the-market program.