Solana's commitment is to enable anyone with an internet connection to participate in capital markets.
Written by: akshaybd
Compiled by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor’s note: The hot performance of Solana in this cycle, coupled with the intense meme trading on-chain and the continuous rise of token prices, is attributed to the Solana Foundation's focus on enhancing infrastructure performance and reducing latency to meet market demand, driving the growth of founders, applications, and tokenization projects.
The following is the original content (for ease of reading and understanding, the original content has been reorganized):
Internet capital markets and F.A.T. protocol engineering
Solana's commitment is to enable anyone with an internet connection to participate in capital markets; today, you only need to download a wallet or application, click a few buttons, and you can join the internet capital market — a globally accessible ledger that can tokenize entities, currencies, and culture.
Why is this important?
It helps us create a world where anyone can own assets anytime and anywhere with just an internet connection. These assets can be global companies, real estate, commodities, or even cultural expressions. This lays the foundation for "universal base ownership." The competition of high-performance L1 is not just about establishing a decentralized NASDAQ, but about creating an internet-native successor to NASDAQ — a capital market with better accessibility, lower latency, and shared global liquidity.
The opportunity is both simple and immense: currently, only about 15% of the global population can participate in the US capital markets — the most liquid market in the world. Many other countries' capital markets lack liquidity, have high access costs, and low settlement efficiency. The cryptocurrency market, however, is more accessible and liquid. At its peak, its trading volume even surpassed NASDAQ and NYSE; we have the opportunity to build the best capital market on the internet.
In the future, companies will go public directly 'on the internet' and be able to reach over a billion investors holding private keys — using their funds to vote on the future they want. This is not limited to stocks but includes all valuable asset classes, cultures, and ideas.
How to accelerate towards this future?
This is the meaning of F.A.T. protocol engineering; in the past, the industry largely built on the idea that 'value would primarily concentrate at the infrastructure layer' (Fat Protocols, 2016). Eight years later, we are still building infrastructure because it often attracts higher valuations.
In contrast, the Solana ecosystem chooses to bet on products, as evidenced at the Breakpoint conference in 2024. By focusing on founders, applications, and tokenization, Solana's market share in transaction fees — an excellent indicator of ecosystem activity and overall health — grew by 1,489% in 2024, reaching 12%.
F = Founders, not just developers
Now, for a determined group of founders, it has never been so simple and swift to go from a garage startup to a billion-dollar company with just an internet connection.
1.tensor: Two founders from Canada, company valuation of $445 million
2.pump.fun: UK team, achieved $155 million in fee revenue in 8 months
3.birdeye: Headquartered in Vietnam, reaching 24 million users in 2024
The startup flywheel will continue to operate at high speed in 2025; the colosseum hackathon (Solana's hackathon) is the largest talent discovery and growth program in the crypto space, with past participants raising a total of $650 million.
This flywheel benefits from ecosystem support built for scalability: from superteam hubs, shipyard workspaces, to the solanaturbine accelerator, community-led infrastructure further accelerates the growth of founders.
A = Applications, not just infrastructure
Infrastructure represents uncertain optimism, while applications represent certain optimism. The Solana ecosystem prioritizes the products that users truly need, resulting in what?
Just in October of this year, application revenue reached $73 million, a 185-fold year-on-year increase, now leading all networks. Additionally, 74% of funds within the ecosystem flowed to applications (compared to 40% for Ethereum), as founders follow user demand.
Solana has always adhered to the principle: what matters is not TVL, but the gathering place of economic activity. Chain GDP (income generated by applications) is the main indicator of the protocol's long-term success. When the income generated by applications exceeds the base layer, it indicates that the protocol layer has achieved product-market fit. If your infrastructure layer is exploitative, applications will leave to establish their own chains or migrate to other chains.
Study the Laffer Curve.
T = Tokenization, not just TVL
TVL is a passive, self-referential metric. Active metrics like capital efficiency and trading volume are more instructive. The more important ultimate goal is: Solana is the best platform for the release of internet assets. In the past six months, we have witnessed the release of 2.6 million tokens, accounting for 78% of the total across all chains. While memes may occupy a larger share of public consciousness, they are not the only things growing.
The treasury balance doubled to $134 million, stablecoins grew by 120% to about $4 billion, and this includes 4,200 physical assets from BAXUSco and dvinlabs, 190 million digital collectibles from drip haus, and over 1 million hotspots from helium, just to name a few.
With the follow-up of adoption, tools, and regulation, super-tokenization will accelerate — this will become a globally accessible ledger where all assets will be tokenized.
Each component of F.A.T. mutually reinforces each other: more founders launching products, more products attracting users, more users driving more capital tokenization, more capital attracting more founders. In just the third quarter of 2024, Solana's native team raised $178 million.
The 'protocol' part in F.A.T. protocol engineering
Teams focused on the core protocol (such as Anza, Jump, Jito, etc.) are working hard every day to enhance performance and optimize the experience. They push the limits of hardware and software to improve Solana's performance and capacity at the base layer. Increasing bandwidth and reducing latency is a key strategy for Solana, emphasizing its ongoing commitment to building infrastructure for practical use, rather than merely for valuation.
Finally, I call this engineering (rather than theory) because it elucidates an important value inherent in the ecosystem. A product culture that is opinionated yet pragmatic, continuously making tough trade-offs, launching and iterating in the real world to find product-market fit (PMF). This culture attracts practitioners, not just academics.
As the ecosystem continues to grow, we should maintain this culture, rather than become dogmatic, or worse — complacent due to any temporary success. The development of cryptocurrency is rapid, and we will always remain flexible.
Currently, the foundation's marketing activities are expected to support these core pillars through various events and content — in the process, we celebrate the best founders, applications, and tokenization projects, while various teams continue to work to enhance Solana's speed and performance. Additionally, given that the innovation renaissance seems to be unfolding in the US, we will refocus on the US market.
