Solana's Vision: Build a Global Internet Capital Market

Solana is dedicated to enabling everyone with internet access to participate in the Capital Market. Today, by simply downloading a digital wallet or app and with a few clicks, anyone can join this global internet Capital Market, where physical assets, currencies, and cultural elements can be digitized.

Why is this important?

This vision aims to create a world where anyone with internet access can own and trade various assets anytime and anywhere. These assets range from shares of global companies to real estate, commodities, and even forms of cultural expression. This lays the foundation for achieving "Universal Basic Ownership." The competition for high-performance blockchains is not just to establish a decentralized Nasdaq, but to create a new generation of capital markets that are internet-native, more inclusive, low-latency, and globally liquid.

Currently, only about 15% of the global population can participate in the US Capital Market — the most liquid market in the world. Many other countries' capital markets suffer from issues such as insufficient liquidity, high entry barriers, and low settlement efficiency. In contrast, the cryptocurrency market is more open and liquid. At its peak, its trading volume even surpassed that of the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. This presents us with the opportunity to build the best capital market on the internet.

In the future, companies will be able to go public "on the Internet" directly and may reach over 1 billion investors holding private keys. These investors can vote with their own funds to decide the future they want. This is not limited to stocks, but includes all valuable asset classes, cultures, and ideas.

How to accelerate the realization of this vision?

This is the significance of the F.A.T. protocol project. In the past, the industry was largely built on the idea that "value would mainly concentrate at the infrastructure layer." Eight years have passed, and we are still continuously improving the infrastructure, as it often attracts higher valuations.

In contrast, the Solana ecosystem has chosen to focus on products, which was fully demonstrated at the Breakpoint conference in 2024. By concentrating on founders, applications, and asset digitization, Solana's market share in transaction fees (a key indicator of ecosystem activity and overall health) grew by 1,489% in 2024, reaching 12%.

F = Founder, not just a developer

Now, for a group of determined entrepreneurs, starting a business from a garage to becoming a billion-dollar company has become unprecedentedly simple and fast, just with a network cable. For example:

1. Two founders from Canada, their company's valuation has reached 445 million USD.
2. A British team has achieved $155 million in fee revenue within 8 months.
3. A company headquartered in Vietnam, with 24 million users by 2024.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem will continue to develop rapidly in 2025. A certain hackathon has become the largest talent discovery and training platform in the crypto space, with past participants having raised a total of $650 million in funding.

This virtuous cycle benefits from the ecosystem support designed for scalability: from community hubs and workspaces to accelerator programs, community-driven infrastructure further accelerates the growth rate of founders.

A = Application, not just infrastructure

Infrastructure represents uncertain optimism, while applications represent certain optimism. The Solana ecosystem prioritizes the products that users truly need. What are the results?

In just October of this year, application revenue reached 73 million USD, a year-on-year increase of 185 times, leading all networks. In addition, 74% of the funds within the ecosystem flowed to applications (compared to 40% for Ethereum), as the founders closely follow user demands.

Solana has always upheld the belief that what matters is not the total locked value (TVL), but the gathering place of economic activity. On-chain GDP (revenue generated by applications) is the main indicator of a protocol's long-term success. When the revenue generated by applications exceeds the base layer, it indicates that the protocol layer has achieved product-market fit. If the infrastructure layer is overly exploitative, applications will leave, opting to build their own chains or migrate to other chains.

T = Asset Digitization, 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 becomes the best platform for issuing internet assets. In the past 6 months, we have witnessed the issuance of 2.6 million tokens, accounting for 78% of the total across all chains. Although Meme tokens occupy a large share of public awareness, they are not the only growing area.

The treasury balance doubled, reaching $134 million, and stablecoins increased by 120%, reaching approximately $4 billion. Additionally, there are 4,200 physical assets, 190 million digital collectibles, and over 1 million IoT hotspots, which are just some examples.

With the increase in adoption, improvement of tools, and regulatory follow-up, the digitalization of assets will accelerate—this will become a globally accessible ledger where all assets will be digitized.

Each component of F.A.T. promotes each other: more founders launch products, more products attract users, more users drive the digitization of more capital, and more capital attracts more founders. In just the third quarter of 2024, the Solana native team raised $178 million.

The "Protocol" Part of the F.A.T. Protocol Engineering

The team focused on the core protocol works hard every day to improve performance and optimize experience. They enhance Solana's performance and capacity at the base layer by pushing the limits of hardware and software. Increasing bandwidth and reducing latency is a key strategy for Solana, emphasizing its continuous commitment to infrastructure development for practical use rather than merely for valuation.

Finally, it is referred to as engineering (rather than theory) because it elucidates an important value inherent in the ecosystem. This is a subjective yet pragmatic product culture that continuously makes difficult trade-offs, launching and iterating in the real world to find product-market fit. This culture attracts practitioners, not just academics.

As the ecosystem continues to grow, we should maintain this culture, rather than becoming dogmatic, or worse - complacent due to any temporary success. The development of cryptocurrency is rapid, and we will always remain adaptable.

Currently, the foundation's marketing activities will support these core pillars through various events and content—during this process, we celebrate the best founders, applications, and digital projects, while teams continue to work on enhancing Solana's speed and performance. Furthermore, given that the innovation renaissance seems to be unfolding in the United States, we will also refocus on the U.S. market.