An bold new funding thesis from crypto-focused enterprise agency Multicoin Capital claims that Solana—at present a dominant $100 billion blockchain ecosystem—may finally “outperform the foremost 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 Could 2018. Noting that the community has grow to be “the fastest-growing developer ecosystem” whereas surpassing “Ethereum on most main on-chain metrics (buying and selling volumes, every day energetic addresses, REV, TEV, DePIN funds, and so forth.),” Samani describes the newly launched thesis because the agency’s fifth main SOL-focused essay.
“Now that Solana is a $100B asset… we wished to share our ideas on how we’re underwriting SOL for robust returns even above $100B market cap,”Samani writes.
Multicoin’s core argument is that Solana’s structure can scale 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 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 price income from funds will not be the true prize. Though the near-zero price of a SOL transaction (roughly $0.001 per transaction) makes it engaging to retailers and shoppers, these charges pale compared to excessive expenses on mainstream money-movement methods.
“Nonetheless, he sees funds as a vital vector for development: “Funds are essential for driving adoption… they’re inherently viral,” Samani says.
In accordance with the report, a viral-like unfold of pockets utilization happens at any time when individuals transact with one another, making on a regular basis funds a robust instrument for onboarding new customers. This, in flip, drives extra liquidity and quantity towards the core DeFi purposes chargeable 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, typically from trusted front-end companions, can faucet into this liquidity.
“CL is a nascent idea… we anticipate it can grow to be the dominant paradigm for quoting liquidity on-chain,” Samani writes. This observe mirrors established TradFi approaches, akin 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 contributors incorporate market-moving info extra rapidly. Not like a single trade 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 providers—from derivatives and lending to real-estate tokenization and conventional equities.
“Just about all belongings will commerce on inherently international and permissionless methods like Solana, finally,” Samani posits. He additionally highlights the potential for completely novel asset courses to emerge, akin to fractionalized actual property—exemplified by initiatives like Parcl—or tokenized bottles of whiskey and collectible watches. This locations Solana in a first-rate 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 way 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 will not be offering monetary providers. However Solana creates the stack that powers lots of… of economic providers… And whereas fuel prices are close to 0… Solana instantly income from the expansion of those monetary providers by way of most extractable worth (MEV),” Samani argues.
In accordance with 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 12 months prior. That determine interprets to an annualized price of $3.2 billion—a powerful bounce, contemplating few conventional belongings are but on-chain and lots of DeFi protocols on Solana stay in early levels.
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,
- Quicker transaction finality throughout international markets,
- Assist for an unlimited vary of tokenized belongings,
- New monetary merchandise which might be completely composable,
- A frictionless platform for permissionless improvement
“There’s 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 wager is that Solana’s persevering with growth 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 totally materializes will rely on 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.
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