Solana 2025 Marketing Memorandum: Building an Internet Native Capital Market

Solana's vision is to enable anyone with an internet connection to participate in the Capital Market. Nowadays, all it takes is to download a wallet or app, click a few buttons, and you can join this globally accessible ledger, realizing the tokenization of assets, currencies, and cultures.

The importance of this vision lies in creating a world where anyone can own assets anytime and anywhere with just an internet connection. These assets can include global companies, real estate, commodities, and even cultural expressions. This lays the foundation for "universal foundational ownership." The competition among high-performance L1s is not only about establishing a decentralized Nasdaq but also about building a capital market that is native to the internet, with better accessibility, lower latency, and shared global liquidity.

Currently, only about 15% of the global population can participate in the US Capital Market — which is the most liquid market in the world. Many other countries' capital markets lack liquidity, have high entry costs, and low settlement efficiency. In contrast, the cryptocurrency market is more accessible and liquid. At its peak, its trading volume even surpasses that of NASDAQ and NYSE, giving us the opportunity to build the best capital market on the internet.

In the future, the company will go public "on the internet" and will be able to reach over one billion investors who hold private keys, allowing them to vote with their own funds to determine the future they want. This is not limited to stocks, but also includes all valuable asset classes, culture, and ideas.

F.A.T. Protocol Engineering

To accelerate towards this future, Solana has proposed the concept of the F.A.T. protocol engineering. Unlike the past industry philosophy that "value will mainly be concentrated at the infrastructure layer," Solana's ecosystem chooses to bet on products. By focusing on founders, applications, and tokenization, Solana's market share in the transaction fee market grew by 1,489% in 2024, reaching 12%.

F = Founder, not just a developer

Today, for a group of determined founders, it has become unprecedentedly simple and quick to go from garage startup to a company valued at a billion dollars. For example, projects like tensor, pump.fun, and birdeye have achieved significant results in a short period of time.

The startup flywheel will continue to operate at high speed in 2025, with the colosseum hackathon becoming the largest talent discovery and growth program in the crypto space. The ecosystem supports everything from the superteam hub, the shipyard workspace, to the Solana turbine accelerator, further accelerating the growth rate of founders.

A = Application, not just infrastructure

The Solana ecosystem prioritizes products that users truly need. In October 2024, application revenue reached $73 million, a year-on-year increase of 185 times, leading all networks. 74% of the funds within the ecosystem flowed to applications, as the founders followed the demands of the users.

Solana has always adhered to the idea that what matters is not TVL, but the aggregation point of economic activity. Chain GDP (revenue generated by applications) is the main indicator of a protocol's long-term success. When the revenue generated by applications exceeds that of the base layer, it indicates that the protocol layer has achieved product-market fit.

T = Tokenization, not just TVL

The ultimate goal of Solana is to become the best platform for the issuance of internet assets. In the past 6 months, we have witnessed the issuance of 2.6 million tokens, accounting for 78% of the total on all chains. Although Memes occupy a large share of public awareness, they are not the only things that are growing.

The treasury balance has doubled to 134 million USD, and stablecoins have increased by 120%, reaching approximately 4 billion USD. In addition, there are a large number of physical assets, digital collectibles, and other tokenized projects. With the adoption, tools, and regulatory follow-up, hyper-tokenization will accelerate development, creating a globally accessible ledger where all assets will be tokenized.

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

The team focused on the core protocol is working hard every day to improve performance and optimize the 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 the ongoing commitment to building infrastructure for practical use.

The Solana ecosystem has an inherent product culture that is opinionated yet pragmatic, continuously making tough trade-offs, launching and iterating in the real world to find product-market fit. This culture attracts practitioners rather than just academics.

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

The foundation's marketing activities are expected to support these core pillars through various events and content, celebrating the best founders, applications, and tokenized projects, while each team continues to work on enhancing Solana's speed and performance. Furthermore, given that innovation revival seems to be unfolding in the United States, we will also refocus on the U.S. market.