Solana Foundation Chairman: Building the world's Internet Capital Market

Organizing: Golden Finance

On February 19th, at the Consensus HK 2025 conference, Lily Liu, Chair of the Solana Foundation, and Henry Sein, Co-founder of Nine Box Capital, jointly discussed Solana's user growth in the meme coin craze, development strategies in a multi-chain ecosystem, and its unique vision as a global financial infrastructure.

This conversation not only provides us with the latest developments in the Solana ecosystem, but also offers valuable insights into the future direction of the cryptocurrency industry for us to contemplate deeply.

Jinse Caijing has organized the speech content as follows, to share with the readers.

Solana Foundation Chairman Lily Liu and Nine Box Capital Co-founder Henry Sein

Hi everyone, I'm Henry Sein, one of the co-founders of Nine Box Capital, one of the regulated crypto hedge funds in Dubai. I have spent 15 years in Hong Kong and am very happy to be back here and back home.

Today we will discuss some of the latest developments in the Solana ecosystem, the future of Solana, and its position in the market. I am very honored to be able to discuss these topics with Lily Liu, Chair of the Solana Foundation. Welcome to Hong Kong, Lily! Thank you for coming.

1. The latest progress of the Solana ecosystem

Lily Liu, the chair of the Solana Foundation, may be a familiar figure to many. What you may not know is that Lily was once a member of the Stanford University rowing team and participated in an eight-person rowing competition. Rowing is closely related to the crypto world because it teaches you something important - patience, which is highly necessary in our industry.

Henry Sein: Lily, I believe many people are very interested in the current situation of the Solana ecosystem. Today we will discuss many of the latest developments regarding Solana and the broader market. Could you share with us some of the latest developments in the Solana ecosystem that you have seen?

Lily Liu: Thank you, Henry. I am delighted to be in Hong Kong. As you said, Solana has made significant progress in multiple areas. In the past, Solana was known as the DeFi chain, NFT chain, gaming chain, stablecoin chain, and most recently, even the meme coin chain. Being a general-purpose Layer 1 blockchain, Solana's challenge lies in achieving breadth and depth in multiple different application scenarios and protocols, adapting to this constantly evolving industry.

Henry Sein: It sounds like Solana has indeed made significant progress in multiple areas. From a data perspective, many users seem to come from the meme coin ecosystem, which is also a relatively new phenomenon. How do you view this change? Is this a natural progression?

Lily Liu: Yes, without a doubt, meme coins have indeed brought in a large number of new users. Criticisms of the crypto industry have always existed, with many believing it to be merely a speculative market. Since Bitcoin reached $1300 in 2013, many have questioned crypto. The ICO era also went through many similar phenomena. People speculating on-chain is not a new phenomenon.

2. The Future of Solana and the Multi-Chain Ecosystem

Henry Sein: Lily, how do you see the future development? If you look further ahead, especially from the perspective of cross-chain and multi-Layer 1 ecosystems, how do you think Solana will develop? Do you think there will be 50 interconnected Layer 1 blockchains?

Lily Liu: I don't think there will be a dominant market structure like the search engine or e-commerce industry. Because in the encryption industry, the cost of launching a new blockchain is high, and the exit incentive and expected value calculation are different from traditional industries. As more chains and use cases emerge, the market will become more decentralized.

Blockchain is not just technology, it also represents community, and community is the key to determining the vitality of blockchain and tokens. As long as blockchain has a community, it will not easily disappear.

Therefore, I believe the future will be a multi-chain ecosystem, with Solana's uniqueness lying in its goal to build global financial infrastructure. The value of blockchain lies in creating a global financial infrastructure, and this is exactly Solana's mission.

Henry Sein: This is a very interesting perspective. Do you think that every blockchain in the future will have a specialized field, and will Solana also have its own "characteristic"?

Lily Liu: I don't see Solana as a "niche market", but as a core part of the global financial infrastructure. The ultimate goal of blockchain is to provide global liquidity and access to 550 million internet users worldwide.

Solana's goal is to provide global liquidity and create explosive markets, not just a specific "niche," but the foundation of the entire industry.

Henry Sein: I remember that after the FTX incident, many people thought that Solana was 'dead', but in fact, Solana has performed quite well in the past year and a half. How do you view Solana's success? Is it the power of the community, the technology, or the support of the infrastructure?

Lily Liu: Indeed, in November and December 2022, many people were pessimistic about Solana, thinking it was "dead." But from the perspective within the community, there has been little change. Everyone is still continuing to build, and their belief has become even stronger. Many people felt uplifted after the FTX collapse because they have the opportunity to continue building the ecosystem they believe in.

Henry Sein: The "boating team" you mentioned can also be inspiring, especially with interest in various regions of the world. Are there any regions that are showing more interest from a global perspective?

Lily Liu: Yes, I think fundamentally, open source technology will eventually become a public project repository. In the end, each of us can be seen as serving all of humanity. Therefore, open source technology is essentially global. That is to say, technology should present Chinese characteristics in China, American characteristics in the United States, German characteristics in Germany, and Indian characteristics in India. How people want to use underlying technology should be reflected in the developer community, the application layer, and their choices. This is how it should be.

3. Changes in the U.S. Market and the Future of the Cryptocurrency Industry

Henry Sein: So, if you ask me, which markets are most important for cryptocurrencies? My answer remains the same: The two major markets with extensive talent and capital resources - the United States and China. In the past four years, I wouldn't say these two markets have been very open to cryptocurrencies, after all, this is just the beginning of the industry. It's constantly changing like the ebb and flow. I think since last November, the entire industry has undergone tremendous changes, especially the attitude of the US market towards cryptocurrencies has made a 180-degree turn. We see the US changing the scope of every discussion, especially the strategic importance of stablecoins, which will drive many changes globally.

Lily Liu: Regarding the expansion you mentioned, I think the changes in the United States are definitely positive for this industry. We now see a lot of discussions about stablecoins as strategic reserves, as well as the end of the "law enforcement supervision" era in the crypto industry.

Henry Sein: From your personal perspective, what do you think is the most important development for the United States in the cryptocurrency industry, especially in terms of its impact on Solana and the entire industry?

Lily Liu: I believe that while there will certainly be a lot of specific legislation and issues of concern to everyone, the most important change has already emerged: we are no longer simply persecuting the entire cryptocurrency industry, nor are we treating the entire industry as an existence that must be eliminated due to certain ideological differences. In the past, regulatory agencies in certain countries took a comprehensive and even indirectly burdensome approach to the industry.

Henry Sein: Happily, that's in the past. Next, we will see that the U.S. policy on stablecoins will be closely aligned with the strategy. From the U.S. perspective, it's clear that the U.S. wants to maintain leadership in all important areas of technology and to continue to expand the dollar's global reach through stablecoins. I've recently seen some charts showing that there are 50 economies around the world with CPI above 5%, involving about 1 billion people. So the U.S. might see this as a strategic opportunity to use that demand to influence long-term interest rates, which is an important goal for the Treasury.

4 The Future of DeFi and the Regulatory Challenges of Innovation

Lily Liu: In addition, I know that you are also discussing the impact of the "Libra" project now. Do you think that the impact of Libra on Solana and the entire industry is positive or negative?

Henry Sein: I think Libra is not good for everyone, without a doubt. I think it's a very bad situation, not worth discussing. However, as for mainstream 'meme coins', such as those with daily trading volumes of 20,000 to 50,000, are they all like Libra? Of course not, they are not assets that will be passed on to the next generation. Mainstream 'meme coins' may not necessarily become long-term store of value assets.

Lily Liu: From a regulatory perspective, the entire crypto industry has experienced an extreme situation. Many technological and financial innovations have been pushed to the limit, resulting in a 'clampdown' on all innovation. We could have explored more innovative products, but due to the current extremely strict regulatory environment, any innovation with a hint of financial nature is often seen as a violation, requiring a significant amount of funds to hire lawyers.

Henry Sein: What we need to rethink now is how to break free from this regulatory constraint and explore more intermediate products in the cryptocurrency economy. For example, creating a token that allows users to share protocol revenue has potential in DeFi, but many are reluctant to try it due to excessive regulation.

Lily Liu: In fact, the future of DeFi is very promising, especially within the Solana ecosystem. What vertical direction do you think is the most exciting for DeFi?

Henry Sein: When we talk about DeFi now, it's often just trading, buying and selling one token for another. But from the original intention of DeFi, it is actually a "peer-to-peer" payment economic system. At its core is decentralized payments and transactions, which is exactly what we should be aiming for. But why haven't we achieved this goal until now? This is because we haven't made enough changes in infrastructure. The payments economy is the "ultimate goal" of the DeFi industry, and it's the part I'm most excited about.

Lily Liu: Last question, as one of the largest L1 foundations in the world, what do you see as the biggest challenge as a foundation? This is a very unique character.

Henry Sein: Maybe it's just a time zone issue, there's always someone who wants to chat with you. In fact, the biggest challenge is the speed and breadth of technological development. Just like in the Web2 era, there are all kinds of user and content demands on the Internet.

Lily Liu: So I think it's important to find ways to stay relevant in this whole range, because that's what we call the 'financial infrastructure,' right? This also means that as an open-source protocol, you need to provide accessibility and availability for all types of assets.

Henry Sein: But it's not just the scope of the asset, it's the scope of the community, and even the scope of humanity as a whole.

Lily Liu: I like this point of view. Thank you very much for sharing your insights with us today. Thank you all very much.

Henry Sein: Thank you, thank you very much for your support.