An bold new funding thesis from crypto-focused enterprise agency Multicoin Capital claims that Solana—presently a dominant $100 billion blockchain ecosystem—may finally “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 Might Topple NYSE And NASDAQ
Multicoin Capital has been a supporter of Solana since its seed spherical in Could 2018. Noting that the community has develop into “the fastest-growing developer ecosystem” whereas surpassing “Ethereum on most main on-chain metrics (buying and selling volumes, each 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 standard inventory exchanges seize charges solely for buying and selling companies, 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 isn’t the true prize. Though the near-zero price of a SOL transaction (roughly $0.001 per transaction) makes it enticing to retailers and shoppers, these charges pale compared to excessive fees on mainstream money-movement techniques.
“Nonetheless, he sees funds as an important vector for progress: “Funds are necessary for driving adoption… they’re inherently viral,” Samani says.
In response to the report, a viral-like unfold of pockets utilization happens at any time when folks transact with one another, making on a regular basis funds a robust software for onboarding new customers. This, in flip, drives extra liquidity and quantity towards the core DeFi purposes answerable for producing the majority of income.
Samani highlights conditional liquidity (CL)—pioneered by DeFi platform DFlow on Solana—as a significant 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 anticipate it’ll develop into the dominant paradigm for quoting liquidity on-chain,” Samani writes. This follow mirrors established TradFi approaches, resembling 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 world members incorporate market-moving data extra shortly. In contrast to a single change server in a single bodily location, MCL spreads management throughout the community, decreasing 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 function not simply as a “decentralized NASDAQ” however as a worldwide platform for all monetary companies—from derivatives and lending to real-estate tokenization and conventional equities.
“Just about all property will commerce on inherently world and permissionless techniques like Solana, finally,” Samani posits. He additionally highlights the potential for fully novel asset courses to emerge, resembling fractionalized actual property—exemplified by initiatives like Parcl—or tokenized bottles of whiskey and collectible watches. This locations Solana in a primary 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 via 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 working on-chain, Samani claims MEV would be the main income driver.
“Solana itself isn’t offering monetary companies. However Solana creates the stack that powers lots of… of economic companies… And whereas fuel prices are close to 0… Solana immediately income from the expansion of those monetary companies 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 almost zero one yr prior. That determine interprets to an annualized fee of $3.2 billion—a powerful soar, 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 in the end overtake incumbent exchanges by delivering:
- Decrease charges and enhanced liquidity,
- Sooner transaction finality throughout world markets,
- Help for an unlimited vary of tokenized property,
- New monetary merchandise which might be fully composable,
- A frictionless platform for permissionless growth
“There may be an unimaginable alternative to create a worldwide 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 growth will create a tidal wave of innovation that legacy venues—NYSE, NASDAQ, CME, and main fee networks—merely can’t replicate with their closed architectures. Whether or not this grand ambition absolutely materializes will depend upon regulatory adoption, technological evolution, and whether or not mainstream finance will embrace the subsequent era of on-chain options.
At press time, SOL traded at $249.50.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
