Solana Basis president Lily Liu stated rising adoption of stablecoins by main firms is validating blockchain’s evolution into world monetary infrastructure, whereas additionally laying the groundwork for AI-driven “machine economies.”
Talking at Consensus Miami 2026 on Tuesday, Liu pointed to latest bulletins involving Meta and Western Union integrating stablecoin funds on Solana as proof that giant enterprises more and more view blockchain rails as sensible infrastructure moderately than speculative expertise.
“It’s not new,” Liu stated, referencing Visa’s resolution in 2023 to construct stablecoin settlement capabilities on Solana following what she described as an “in depth goal evaluation” of blockchain networks.
“Quick and low-cost is a no brainer for funds,” she stated, including that enterprises additionally want deep liquidity, builders and a broad ecosystem of functions surrounding these fee rails.
Liu described Western Union’s transfer onto blockchain infrastructure as a very significant milestone for the crypto trade. “After I first got here into this trade in 2014, Western Union was at all times the white whale crypto,” she stated.
Exploring the intersection of crypto and synthetic intelligence, Liu argued that blockchain-based funds are uniquely suited to “agentic commerce,” the place AI brokers transact autonomously with different machines and companies.
Conventional web fee techniques stay closely depending on bank cards, which make micropayments economically impractical due to interchange charges, Liu stated. Blockchain rails, against this, allow sub-dollar transactions and real-time fee streaming.
“The overwhelming majority of transactions that occur on the web are literally of microtransaction worth,” Liu stated. “You actually can not course of these particular person transactions since you’ve acquired to place them by means of bank cards.”
Liu additionally defended the Solana ecosystem’s latest interventions following safety incidents involving initiatives resembling Vault and Drift, saying preserving trade confidence generally outweighs aggressive rivalries inside decentralized finance.
Trying forward, Liu argued the trade remains to be underestimating blockchain’s final position. Quite than functioning primarily as generalized expertise platforms, she stated blockchains are essentially “monetary rails at the beginning.”
She added that crypto’s longer-term promise might lengthen past funds into what she known as “web capital markets,” permitting corporations and sovereign entities worldwide to entry world capital formation extra immediately.