An formidable new funding thesis from crypto-focused enterprise agency Multicoin Capital claims that Solana—at present a dominant $100 billion blockchain ecosystem—may ultimately “outperform the key conventional finance (TradFi) gamers,” together with NYSE, NASDAQ, and CME. The 17-minute learn, revealed by Multicoin Capital Co-Founder Kyle Samani and titled “The Solana Thesis: Web Capital Markets,” outlines intimately why the agency believes SOL can seize worth from each layer of the worldwide monetary stack.
How Solana May Topple NYSE And NASDAQ
Multicoin Capital has been a supporter of Solana since its seed spherical in Might 2018. Noting that the community has turn into “the fastest-growing developer ecosystem” whereas surpassing “Ethereum on most main on-chain metrics (buying and selling volumes, every day lively addresses, REV, TEV, DePIN funds, and so on.),” Samani describes the newly launched thesis because the agency’s fifth main SOL-focused essay.
“Now that Solana is a $100B asset… we needed to share our ideas on how we’re underwriting SOL for sturdy returns even above $100B market cap,”Samani writes.
Multicoin’s core argument is that Solana’s structure can cut back consumer charges by 90% to 99%—but additionally allow the ecosystem to seize a market cap that surpasses many TradFi incumbents. Samani contends that whereas typical inventory exchanges seize charges solely for buying and selling providers, Solana’s decentralized nature permits it to accrue further income from a number of monetary protocols constructed atop its community.
Within the thesis, Samani stresses that the direct charge income from funds is just not the true prize. Though the near-zero value of a SOL transaction (roughly $0.001 per transaction) makes it engaging to retailers and customers, these charges pale compared to excessive expenses on mainstream money-movement programs.
“Nonetheless, he sees funds as a vital vector for progress: “Funds are vital for driving adoption… they’re inherently viral,” Samani says.
In response to the report, a viral-like unfold of pockets utilization happens each time folks transact with one another, making on a regular basis funds a strong software for onboarding new customers. This, in flip, drives extra liquidity and quantity towards the core DeFi functions answerable for producing the majority of income.
Samani highlights conditional liquidity (CL)—pioneered by DeFi platform DFlow on Solana—as an important breakthrough. CL permits market makers (MMs) to supply tighter spreads by making certain that solely “non-toxic” order circulate, usually from trusted front-end companions, can faucet into this liquidity.
“CL is a nascent idea… we count on it’s going to turn into the dominant paradigm for quoting liquidity on-chain,” Samani writes. This apply mirrors established TradFi approaches, corresponding to these utilized by Robinhood and its market-making companions. The largest potential influence is extra favorable pricing for normal customers, bridging one of many largest effectivity gaps between centralized and decentralized exchanges.
Samani argues that Solana’s upcoming A number of Concurrent Leaders (MCL) framework—the place a number of nodes concurrently produce blocks—will let international individuals incorporate market-moving info extra shortly. Not like a single alternate server in a single bodily location, MCL spreads management throughout the community, lowering latency for these removed from legacy finance hubs. In precept, this technique ought to allow decentralized worth discovery to outperform centralized matching engines.
Samani envisions Solana’s position not simply as a “decentralized NASDAQ” however as a world platform for all monetary providers—from derivatives and lending to real-estate tokenization and conventional equities.
“Just about all property will commerce on inherently international and permissionless programs like Solana, ultimately,” Samani posits. He additionally highlights the potential for totally novel asset courses to emerge, corresponding to fractionalized actual property—exemplified by initiatives like Parcl—or tokenized bottles of whiskey and collectible watches. This locations Solana in a chief place to host the buying and selling and administration of all types of tokenized worth.
A key focus is how blockchains like Solana seize income by means of most extractable worth (MEV)—the worth validators or miners can glean from the ordering of transactions. With an increasing array of economic protocols and capital markets operating on-chain, Samani claims MEV would be the main income driver.
“Solana itself is just not offering monetary providers. However Solana creates the stack that powers a whole bunch… of economic providers… And whereas fuel prices are close to 0… Solana immediately income from the expansion of those monetary providers by way of most extractable worth (MEV),” Samani argues.
In response to the thesis, the Solana community earned greater than $800 million in “REV” (income minus token inflation) over the past quarter of 2024, up from practically zero one 12 months prior. That determine interprets to an annualized price of $3.2 billion—a powerful leap, contemplating few conventional property are but on-chain and lots of DeFi protocols on Solana stay in early phases.
In concluding the thesis, Samani asserts that Solana’s decentralized infrastructure can finally overtake incumbent exchanges by delivering:
Decrease charges and enhanced liquidity,
Quicker transaction finality throughout international markets,
Help for an unlimited vary of tokenized property,
New monetary merchandise which can be totally composable,
A frictionless platform for permissionless growth
“There’s an unimaginable alternative to create a world and permissionless monetary system… That’s the imaginative and prescient for Web Capital Markets. That’s the imaginative and prescient for Solana,” Samani writes.
Multicoin’s guess is that Solana’s persevering with enlargement will create a tidal wave of innovation that legacy venues—NYSE, NASDAQ, CME, and main cost networks—merely can’t replicate with their closed architectures. Whether or not this grand ambition absolutely materializes will rely upon regulatory adoption, technological evolution, and whether or not mainstream finance will embrace the subsequent technology of on-chain options.
At press time, SOL traded at $249.50.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
