Lily Liu, President of the Solana Basis, is having a ogle past meme coins to set Solana because the infrastructure for what she calls “web capital markets.”
In an spicy interview with BeInCrypto and a presentation at the 2025 Web3 Competition in Hong Kong, Liu outlined her vision for blockchain abilities’s role in democratizing financial access.
From Meme Coins to the “The complete thing Chain”
“Solana has developed from being the DeFi chain to the NFT chain, the gaming chain, the cost chain, and lately the meme coin chain,” Liu explained. “While you sum all that up, Solana is the every little thing chain.”
While meme coins drove Solana’s tag to a ambitious $290 excessive in January sooner than falling 60% to around $120 at present, Liu views them as exact one transient asset class in a substantial broader ecosystem. “Meme coins are exact one invent of asset. There would perhaps be one thing else—there’s always going to be the tulip market and the beanie baby market. That’s been going on for a extremely long time. That’s exact what humans create with or without blockchain,” Liu eminent.
No matter tag volatility, Solana’s Total Worth Locked (TVL) reached an all-time excessive in April 2025, demonstrating persisted investor self belief within the ecosystem past speculative resources.
The Crisis of Capital Get right of entry to for Younger Generations
Liu, who beforehand co-founded Create.com (bought by Coinbase in 2018) and served as CFO of Chinaco Healthcare Company, brings fundamental abilities from building businesses in every the US and China to her most modern role at Solana. Her background in pale finance presents weight to her critique of most modern capital markets.
“Fifty years within the past, it took 25 hours of labor to aquire one half of the S&P 500. Right this moment time, it takes 195 hours,” Liu eminent in her presentation, highlighting how capital gains have change into less accessible to moderate employees while losses are increasingly more socialized thru nationwide debt.
This inaccessibility to capital markets has created bother amongst kids globally. Liu pointed to challenges in Korea and China, where housing prices have skyrocketed past what young professionals can present you the cash for without parental toughen.
“In Korea and China, the of us’ abilities has retained the upside of a indispensable asset class luxuriate in housing. Kids’s capability to alter into hours of labor into capital and freedom later in life has change into extremely restricted,” she observed. “In China, it creates immense bother for families where young males are culturally expected to accept as true with an dwelling sooner than marriage, yet moderate expert salaries create this not doubtless without parental abet.”
Blockchain as World Monetary Infrastructure
Liu sees blockchain’s core motive as creating a unified world financial infrastructure, honest like how the web unified consideration. “What crypto is doing is offering this unified infrastructure to unify the wealth, the transactions, the financial coffers of 5 and a half of billion folks,” she explained.
This infrastructure enables what Liu calls “web capital markets,” making the corpulent vary of financial resources accessible to any person with an web connection. She contrasts the simplicity of downloading a crypto pockets in opposition to the complex forms of pale banking and investment methods.
For Liu, this infrastructure is terribly precious in expanding access to equities and other resources that have every basic worth and worth discovery—currently reserved primarily for licensed merchants even in developed markets.
Neighborhood-Essentially primarily based Capitalism and the Ownership Financial system
Liu argues that blockchain presents an alternative to pale economic methods. “In the final 100 years, we’ve reach to settle for that the dominant possession items are both capitalist or communist—corporate possession or thunder possession,” she explained. “What Bitcoin proposed is that these aren’t the finest picks.”
This has developed into what Liu calls “neighborhood-primarily based capitalism,” a time duration she makes exhaust of to list economic items where worth accrues to network members moderately than exact shareholders or the thunder. “Rather then popular total revenue, which is in actuality a welfare economy, crypto proposes popular total opportunity,” she acknowledged. This model permits early members in network building to half within the upside.
Liu contrasts this with pale platforms luxuriate in Uber, where early drivers who helped bootstrap the network acquired hourly pay nevertheless no fairness upside. Her “possession economy” view refers to this more inclusive technique to capital formation where contribution and possession are more closely aligned.
Solana’s governance shows this philosophy, which was lately demonstrated in a controversial proposal to diminish inflation. Liu actively participated on this dialogue, explaining that inflation reduction might maybe presumably maybe presumably seem environment friendly from a network security perspective nevertheless would doubtlessly spoil Solana as a yield-producing asset.
“Dynamic yield on an asset makes it a worse asset,” Liu emphasised. “While you’ve gotten an asset yielding a mounted percentage annually, you tag that very in a thoroughly different arrangement than an asset yielding at variable rates.”
Having a ogle 5 years ahead, Liu envisions Solana enabling an possession economy where blockchain creates new pathways for parents to alter into labor into capital, bringing “more inclusivity for 5 and a half of billion folks on the web into capital markets.”
“The quit thunder is going in resources that have worth, can additionally account for tag, and lift more inclusivity across the realm,” Liu concluded. “Right here is where crypto is going.”
