solar.org / history
The full transparency record.
The Solar Foundation believes the network's history should be public and verifiable. Below is a sourced timeline of the project, from Swipe's founding through the Binance acquisition, the 2023 rebrand to Solar, and the 2025–2026 wind-down. Verifiable facts link to primary sources. A small number of points reflect statements the Foundation has placed on record about internal events, labelled accordingly. They are consistent with the public record but have not yet been independently confirmed, and the parties involved have not responded publicly.
VERIFIED links to a primary source
REPORTED third-party reporting
FOUNDATION STATEMENT the Foundation's statement, not yet independently confirmed
Swipe origins & the SXP token
2018–2019VERIFIED
Swipe — a multi-asset crypto wallet and Visa debit-card platform — was founded in 2018. CMC ↗
VERIFIED
SXP launched as an ERC-20 on Ethereum (contract 0x8ce9…b6a9), original max supply 300,000,000, deflationary toward a 100M floor. Etherscan ↗
VERIFIED
Token sale (Aug 2019): $0.20 / SXP, $12M raised (private 6.52% + public 13.48%). Binance Research ↗
VERIFIED
Genesis allocation: Founder 20% · Team 20% · Reserve 40% · Public 13.48% · Private 6.52%.
Binance acquires Swipe
2020–2021VERIFIED
2020-07-07 — Binance announced its acquisition of Swipe and listed SXP. Binance ↗
VERIFIED
2020-10-22 — Binance opened BEP2 & BEP20 deposits/withdrawals for SXP. Binance ↗
REPORTED
The founder burned his entire 60M founder allocation (10M in 2020; the remaining 50M in April 2021, ~17.5% of supply, reported >$200M). Ethereum World News ↗
VERIFIED
SXP reached its all-time high (~$5.79–$5.86) on 2021-05-03. CoinGecko ↗
VERIFIED
2021-12-30 — Binance announced it would acquire the remaining shares of Swipe (full ownership; Swipe as its card-program manager). Binance ↗
Solar: the independent Layer-1
2022–2023VERIFIED
The Solar Blockchain Foundation was established (~Dec 2021) to steward SXP as an independent, community-driven, DAO-governed network. CryptoRank ↗
VERIFIED
2022-03-28 — Solar mainnet went live (dPoS fork of ARK Core: 53 producers, 8s blocks). Solar ↗
VERIFIED
VERIFIED
2023-05-15 — the swap executed; the Solar swap portal closed 2023-07-05. Solar ↗
VERIFIED
Core 4.3.1 (2023-07-20) is the current stable mainnet. GitHub ↗
Products & Core 5.0
2024–2025VERIFIED
The team expanded into consumer products: Solar Card, tymt (game launcher), District 53, BrighterVPN, under "Solar Enterprises" (2024-05-30). Solar ↗
VERIFIED
Core 5.0 — a next-generation consensus upgrade (BFT + BLS signatures, decoupled RPC nodes, ~20× throughput) — entered alpha in June 2024 and reached ~90% testnet completion by November 2025. It was never released. Solar ↗ Nov 2025 update ↗
Resignation & wind-down
2025–2026VERIFIED
November 2025 — the project's lead developer resigned, citing conditions that prevented further progress and confidentiality that limited transparency at the time. Statement ↗
FOUNDATION STATEMENT
January 2026 — the Foundation's Project Status Update stated no further protocol updates are planned, and that prospective successor teams declined after due diligence. It cited unresolved concerns about treasury custody residing outside the Solar team, card-fee/utility changes made without notice, and duplicated token supply on BSC distributed via external infrastructure — the Foundation's stated position; the parties involved have not responded publicly. Status Update ↗ Token Swap Agreement ↗
VERIFIED
27–30 January 2026 — an open governance vote (SXP-GOV-2026-01) on an optional, voluntary migration framework was rejected on quorum (54.7% participation vs 67% required) despite 100% approval among votes cast. Proposal record → Outcome ↗
VERIFIED
2025–2026 — exchange support narrowed: Korean exchanges delisted SXP (March 2025); Binance ended SXP spot trading on 1 April 2026. CryptoRank ↗ MEXC ↗
VERIFIED
The Foundation maintains seed infrastructure and this record; no Solar assets, code, governance authority, or infrastructure have been transferred to any successor. Outcome ↗
Sources & methodology
Every verified fact links to a primary source — exchange announcements, Etherscan, on-chain records, and the official blog. Points labelled Foundation statement reflect the Foundation's published statements about internal events; they have not been independently confirmed and the other parties have not responded publicly.
© The Solar Foundation · Maintained for transparency and continuity.
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