Compiled by Golden Finance, the 2025 Shanghai Blockchain International Week and the 11th Blockchain Global Summit were held in Shanghai from October 18th to 22nd. Solana Foundation Chairperson Lily Liu delivered a keynote speech at the event. She stated that each generation of internet advancement and innovation requires unique hardware and software. The essence of blockchain lies in two key aspects: assets and financial infrastructure. Solana aims to build a technology platform for internet finance and serve as its foundational infrastructure. Regarding Solana's current development, Lily Liu stated that Solana ranks first in application revenue, developer community growth, and newly issued assets across the industry. She believes that all assets will become digital assets, and "everything can be tokenized." Solana's vision is to tokenize all assets, including blockchain-native assets, traditional financial assets, and emerging assets, making these asset classes tradable, usable, and collateralized. Speaking of Solana's development in the Chinese-speaking world, Lily Liu stated that Solana has always attached great importance to the region and has made significant investments over the past two years to support its developer ecosystem. Solana will continue to support the Chinese-speaking developer community in China and hopes to collaborate more closely in payment, DePIN, and AI. Lily Liu concluded by emphasizing that the crypto industry will have two primary application scenarios in the future: assets and international financial infrastructure. Bitcoin, known as "digital gold," will continue to be the primary asset, while Solana strives to become the future financial infrastructure. Golden Finance has compiled Lily Liu's remarks below. Host: Next, please welcome Lily Liu, Chairperson of the Solana Foundation, to deliver her keynote address. Please welcome! Welcome, Lily! Lily Liu: Good morning! I'm Lily Liu, and my Chinese name is Liu Yuanli. Actually, I first heard about Bitcoin when I was living in Shanghai in 2013. Today marks my first opportunity to return to Shanghai and attend the Shanghai Blockchain Conference. So, I'm very grateful to Mr. Xiao for your continued support of the industry's development in China over the past decade. I'm also grateful for this opportunity to participate and support HashKey and our partners, and to share Solana's recent progress, future plans, and direction in Shanghai. How many of you have heard of Solana? Raise your hands! Quite a few have, and our community in China is very active. First, why did I become interested in Bitcoin after hearing about it in Shanghai in 2013? I'm with a schoolmate named Hua Bili, who's been constantly talking about Bitcoin since August 2013. You absolutely must look into Bitcoin. We often played poker together, and we kept bringing up Bitcoin. I said Bitcoin had become Hua Bili's religion. I took a look at the white paper, and I initially doubted it was a very real technology. I opened the white paper and saw "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." I began to think it was a very interesting concept. The internet is now an information internet. 2014 also marked the beginning of the second wave of the internet, which can be considered a mobile internet. Each generation of internet advancement and innovation has unique hardware and software requirements. Why is it called Web3 now? Because Web3 is a new development and innovation related to assets and the internet, and it also requires its own set of hardware and software. Let's get back to the use of blockchain itself. There are two main uses: one is blockchain as an asset. By 2025, it's clear which blockchain will play that role: Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin's own white paper title states "peer-to-peer electronic cash system," not "digital gold." Bitcoin's vision is to build a native financial infrastructure for the internet. Blockchain is both an asset and a financial infrastructure. At the time, I was looking at which technologies around the world could and should pursue this path. I remember discussing Bitcoin's block size for several years in 2016 and 2017. Ultimately, Bitcoin itself decided to treat us as an asset. It was just a matter of which technology in this field would serve as the platform and form the internet's financial infrastructure. Let's discuss some of the challenges facing traditional finance today. Traditional finance is, of course, a rich system and a diverse market. However, what is the current situation we've come to accept as universal? There are so many assets and so many markets, but they're all fragmented. How can this be decentralized? Different countries, banks, and companies all had different standards. Now, each country, company, and consortium has its own standard. However, money and assets will benefit from the theory of "network effects." What is the concept? When a network has more users and more people are using it, its value will increase. We've all seen the online video "Experience Nation" (audio) about how strong, large, and important network effects are. We often say "money is work business." Network effects have a very strong impact on some of the application platforms we've already seen, and they will also have a significant impact on finance. Speaking of Solana, what was the original vision? It was to provide technology services for finance, to be a technology platform for internet finance, and to be the foundational infrastructure for internet finance. How can we describe it? We wanted to integrate all asset classes and all use cases in a mobile environment. That's what Solana is. Let's talk about how Solana is currently driving the internet capital market. The ecosystem consists of three layers: the network, the application and technology platforms, and the asset layer. For the ecosystem to develop, each layer must be active and, crucially, profitable. Let's first discuss some current data. Solana has grown rapidly over the past few years. Daily usage is 2-3 times higher than all other chains in the industry combined. Applications on Solana are very profitable, currently leading the industry in terms of application revenue. The developer community is the core of every community, and its developer growth rate has accelerated significantly over the past few years. Last year, it ranked first in terms of developer community growth. Integrating all assets and markets, it also ranks first in terms of newly issued assets. For more specific data, especially in the first quarter of 2025, the Solana ecosystem began to experience very rapid growth, with growth in the network, application, and asset layers. Solana is a scalable blockchain that integrates all users, applications, assets, and use cases within a single environment. Our industry often compares the performance of one chain against another. Our vision is to surpass the performance of traditional finance. This year marked the fifth anniversary of our mainnet launch, and we currently achieve over 1,000 transactions per second (TPS) per day, excluding voting TPS. This compares favorably to Visa, which achieves 1,700. This means we're already close to Visa and Nasdaq, two leading traditional financial platforms, and can rival the performance of large networks and enterprises. At the network level, we're focusing on continuously increasing bandwidth and reducing latency. We'll also be making significant technological advancements this year and next. Currently, we complete a block in 400 milliseconds, with skyrocketing prices and transaction fees as low as 0.0005 cents. This is already leading performance in the blockchain industry. However, we're not satisfied yet. If we truly want to build a native internet finance infrastructure, we need to advance both the technology and the network. What use cases are these intended for? We believe all assets will become digital assets, and "everything can be tokenized." Traditional finance currently has $500 trillion in assets, but only a small portion has been transferred to the blockchain over the past year, typically through money market funds. Initially, we didn't believe blockchain infrastructure would serve only assets within a specific ecosystem, or only blockchain-native assets. Currently, the volume of blockchain-native assets is approximately four trillion, though some events two months ago may have slightly reduced this. Currently, blockchain is focused on a narrow range of assets, and this should be the industry's goal. If all assets are tokenized, where will these assets be used? We believe in the "marketization of everything." Our vision is to tokenize all assets, including blockchain-native assets, traditional financial assets, and completely new assets. For example, Pokémon cards are a popular gaming market. They can also be tokenized and turned into tradable, usable, and collateralized assets on the blockchain. Comparing Solana to these financial companies, citing some European and American examples, Solana has only been around for five years, yet has approximately 80 million monthly active users. Compare that to our partner, PayPal, which has been around for 30 years and has approximately 400 million monthly users. We hope to reach this scale in less than 30 years. First, let's discuss the progress and data of the developer community. We place great emphasis on attracting new developers. A community has two primary resources: talent and capital. This applies to any economy, company, or entity. By 2024, we aim to attract 7,500 new developers, who will benefit significantly from the Solana ecosystem. By 2024, ecosystem application revenue will reach $3.3 billion, and funding will reach $8.9 billion. Solana has only raised $30 million itself. While this figure is significant, it represents only a small portion of Solana's funding. We currently have over 2,000 applications, including the newly released Solana Seeker mobile app, and hundreds of mobile apps. Not only are developers participating in our ecosystem, but many businesses are also interested in joining, particularly those focused on stablecoins and other use cases. We are currently the fastest-growing platform. Why has Solana always prioritized the Chinese-speaking region? It's because we started with payments. Speaking of payments alone, the Chinese-speaking region in China is a leader, with a population of over one billion. Who pioneered the concept of "Super App" over the past 15 years? China, where the payment ecosystem is unique. What areas does Solana hope to focus on in the Chinese-speaking region? Over the past two years, we've invested heavily in supporting the developer ecosystem in the region. We will continue to support the developer community and hope to collaborate more closely in payment, Decentralized Payment (DPIN), and AI. In the future, Solana's role in finance could be compared to what Netflix is to entertainment and Amazon is to e-commerce. By this comparison, Solana has reached a $100 billion market cap the fastest, taking only four and a half years. Apple took 30 years, and Google took eight. If they've achieved this level of progress in just five years from mainnet launch, we believe the next five years are very promising. What does it rely on? It relies on revenue from our network. The ecosystem's growth relies on both the network and helping our app developers earn money. Only in this way can we form a stable, sustainable, and healthy economic system. Our industry uses Solana for two reasons: as an asset and as an international financial infrastructure. We believe Bitcoin, "digital gold," is an asset, and Solana is the future financial infrastructure. Thank you very much!
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