Exclusive interview with Lily Liu, Chairman of Solana Foundation: Building a blockchain ecosystem is like climbing the Tower of Babel

Interviewee: Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation

By Anderson Sima, Foresight News

If we conduct a background statistics on entrepreneurs in the Web3 world, it is not difficult to find that the founders of the leading ecology and projects are basically new immigrants. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, is of Russian descent, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, is of Chinese descent, and Elon Mask, the world's richest man who has been paying attention to the Crypto field, is of South African descent.

AnnaLee Saxenian, a scholar at the University of California, once used a concept to describe this group of immigrants - "New Argonauts"; in Greek mythology, the Argonauts refer to a group of warriors who boarded the ship "Argo" , embark on an adventurous journey to find the Golden Fleece. Saxenian borrows this metaphor to describe modern skilled immigrants. They arrived at the "Land of Adventure" from their home country, acquired valuable knowledge, skills and resources, and then returned to their home country with the "Golden Fleece" to promote local innovation and technological progress.

The same goes for Solana, who came back from the dead several times. Among the two founders, Anatoly Yakovenko is of Ukrainian descent, Raj Gokal is from India, and Lily Liu, who is in charge of the Solana Foundation, is also of Chinese descent.

Lily is originally from Changsha, Hunan, and her Chinese name is Liu Yuanli. Her parents left the mainland and moved to Taiwan in 1949. They settled here after studying in the United States and became the first generation immigrants. Lily was born in the United States later, but she still retains the cultural symbol of "hot girl". This comes from her grandparents' daily cooking when she was a child, and she quietly grew up with her. After graduating from Stanford University, Lily returned to the mainland again after entering the workplace. She has many years of work experience in Beijing, Shanghai and other places. By chance, she came into contact with Bitcoin and blockchain technology in 2013. In 2021, at the invitation of Solana founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, she officially joined Solana and took charge of foundation affairs.

At the beginning of 2025, Foresight News conducted an exclusive interview with Lily. In her view, the existing Solana ecosystem does not focus solely on a certain type of application innovation such as Memecoin. Solana’s ambition is to become an emerging financial infrastructure for the world. , which also explains why the community is flocking to the Solana ecosystem amid the Memecoin craze. Faced with this "heavy traffic", Solana officials are extremely calm and restrained.

The following is the full text, with certain deletions:

Foresight News: 2024 has just passed, what are the important developments for Solana?

Lily : From any metric, our ecosystem will have achieved significant growth in 2024. Regardless of the transaction volume, user volume, or capital volume, they all show a strong upward trend. Last year around September or October, we surpassed Ethereum in some key indicators. One is the economic value capture of the blockchain itself. We surpassed Ethereum in October. In addition, if you look at the revenue of the application layer, we have also surpassed Ethereum. Also, according to the latest developer report, in the past six years or so, a report with detailed statistics on the number of developers in each region has been published every year. Since last July, the fastest growth has been in our developer community.

Ethereum may have about 20,000 developers now, and they have had smart contracts since 2015, which is an early start. We now have about 7,500 developers. Although we started 5 years later than Ethereum, our growth rate is also very fast.

Judging from these data , our blockchain ecosystem has become very rich and valuable, which attracts more developers and community participants. The main purpose of app development is to attract users and create profitable products, thus creating a virtuous cycle.

In 2024, from these indicators, many of Solana's data have reached record highs.

Foresight News: If you could use one keyword to summarize Solana 's performance in 2024, what would you choose?

Lily : It won’t be Memecoin. (laugh)

Foresight News: What will be the focus of Solana in 2025?

Lily : Actually we have several internal plans. We have a framework for blockchain growth, which is similar to a three-tier structure. The most basic layer is the blockchain itself, which is the cornerstone of the entire ecosystem. It is like a piece of land. Without the blockchain, neither developers nor users can carry out their work.

The second layer is the application layer, which requires a community of developers to build applications. This is like having land, houses, and people to develop and operate them to form an economy and society.

The third layer is the "city" layer. To form a successful city like New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore, the ecology needs culture on the one hand, and a special economic model on the other. In the development process, on the one hand, we must carry out more innovations in the blockchain network and continuously promote technology. For example, in terms of the underlying network, our goal is to increase bandwidth and reduce latency.

At the application layer, our direction is to focus on founders applications and tokens. An industry article in 2017 mentioned that value capture on the blockchain is mainly at the application layer, just like Facebook, Google, etc. in Web2, which realizes a lot of value at the application layer. In the blockchain industry, this has also formed a view that we should focus on the development of the second layer.

The core asset of our ecosystem is talent. If we use a city analogy, New York is New York because of its international talents. Blockchain requires technology, but talent is the key. There have been many blockchain projects in the past 10 years, but only Ethereum and Solana have formed a large developer ecosystem, because building a successful ecosystem is hundreds of times more difficult than building a project.

We have always focused on developers, but now making a successful application requires a wider range of capabilities, not just developers, but also product, marketing and other talents. From the beginning, the vision of blockchain, as described in the Bitcoin white paper, is to achieve personal digital ownership and even community ownership, which is different from the current corporate or national ownership model and opens up the possibility of new ownership models.

To realize the vision of blockchain, several conditions are needed: first, a high-performance network, second, a developer community, and third, sufficient assets and a reasonable way to utilize assets. At the application layer, we need to establish a good economic system and focus on assets on chain.

At the same time, in order to create a good blockchain ecosystem, in addition to hard power, we also need "soft power", such as culture. If you want to explain why New York has a unique culture and atmosphere, it is because of an intangible feeling. Building a city requires hardware on the one hand, and software on the other. The software here includes the culture between people. Like Abu Dhabi and Dubai, while they have been developing physical facilities in the past 20-30 years, they have also attracted cultural institutions, such as the Louvre Museum, in order to build cultural attraction.

If we think more deeply, we hope to build a huge economic system on the blockchain. To attract assets, we must achieve something on the chain that cannot be done in traditional ways. Until now, the charm of blockchain has been mainly in speculation, but in the long run, the economic system is not just a transaction, but an exchange system. There is a transactional component to any economy, but payments are more than just a purchase and sale transaction; they are an exchange.

In our industry, it is currently mainly speculation. For example, assets rise from 0 to 10 yuan, which gives the industry an early market value proposition. But in the long run, we hope to have traditional transaction-based applications as well as more A large payment-based market. We are not just about transactions or payments, our goal is to be a universal platform, just like the Internet is not just about email or a single application. We want to attract a variety of assets and provide financial services for the entire asset spectrum.

Foresight News: Trump is about to take office. How does Solana view the new US government’s encryption regulatory measures?

Lily : We are very concerned about Trump coming to power. In the past four years, the U.S. government was not very supportive of blockchain, and some were even opposed to cryptocurrencies, but now the situation has changed. The new government's emphasis on and support for technology has changed. We know that the United States has been at the forefront of every round of technological development in Silicon Valley over the past 30 years. We believe that the new government will recognize the supporting role of blockchain in U.S. strategy. So we very much hope and have plans to cooperate with the US government in the future.

Foresight News: Wall Street funds will increase their holdings of Bitcoin spot ETFs in large amounts in 2024, but the funds have not entered the ecosystem. Under the leadership of the new US government, will more talents and funds enter the encryption field?

Lily : Yes, every round there will be more and more people from different backgrounds interested in blockchain and entering this field. It depends on what are the popular application fields in each round, which will attract corresponding talents and assets.

This round now focuses more on some new application directions, such as on-chain structured products that are combined with structured products in traditional finance. There is a lot of design space, and some talents on Wall Street can participate in this area. We have also seen some new developments, such as Ethena, which is a new stable currency with its own technology and system. Some talents on Wall Street can learn from its development and apply some designs of traditional finance to the chain. This This combination will bring new products and visions, thereby promoting ecological development.

Foresight News: Vitalik has commented on Solana. He believes that Solana is not decentralized enough, but I have seen on the other hand, many projects have recently said that they want to move to Solana; what do you think of this relationship with Ethereum? A competitive relationship?

Lily : I attach great importance to the original team of Ethereum. They had the vision to build Ethereum in 2015 and implemented the technology. This is amazing. They really focus on decentralization and understand its importance. Last year, Vitalik also wrote an article explaining relevant principles and vision, which is consistent with the principles and vision of blockchain.

But now Ethereum and EVM have changed a lot, the EVM community has become very broad, and some indicators no longer match the actual situation. We cannot keep looking at things from the perspective of the past. In terms of measuring decentralization, there has been a big difference from 2020 to now. Many people have an overly simplistic understanding of decentralization, thinking that the more nodes and the more dispersed they are, the better the chain, but in fact this is not the case.

We have made some technical choices, such as increasing the technical requirements and costs of nodes, which are about 2 times (not 10 times) those of Ethereum. This is to better support the product and user experience, and ease the tasks of users and developers. . Therefore, some views on decentralization within the industry are inaccurate and based on outdated information.

In addition, some L2 projects claim to focus on decentralization, but in fact they have centralized operations, such as using a centralized sequencer, which is logically contradictory.

Foresight News: Sui ecology and Base ecology, how do you view the relationship between them?

Lily : I know that many developers like Sui's language. We welcome competition, because competition will push us to innovate faster and better. From the current point of view, Sui is a relatively successful ecosystem. They focus on products and have applications, products and users. We also hope to learn more from them.

Regarding Base, returning to the original vision of Bitcoin is to have community ownership and focus on individual and community ownership. But the contradiction with Base is that, judging from last year's data, most of its network fees turned into Coinbase's profits, of which very little was given to the Ethereum main network, and most of it was retained by Coinbase for its own use.

If calculated on an annualized basis, Coinbase's revenue from Base is close to $100 million. As a company, it is understandable to serve shareholders, but from the original value of blockchain, it should be the ownership of individuals and communities. Base mainly represents the ownership of the company, which is inconsistent with the concept of blockchain.

Coinbase 2024 Q4 revenue distribution, graph from X

Foresight News: The two hottest sectors in 2024 are Memecoin and AI Agent. What do you think of these two sectors?

Lily : In my opinion, Memecoin is a type of asset. Each cycle has different technology crazes, such as NFT, chain games, DePin, etc., but they all have one thing in common, which is the need for traffic. Where the traffic is, people will choose to go.

When I joined Solana, the community thought Solana was an NFT chain, and later regarded it as a DePin chain. Now everyone jokingly calls it the "Meme chain". In fact, we never define ourselves as an ecosystem that only serves a certain track. We want to be a universal platform.

Nowadays, many AI technology projects choose to issue coins on Solana because it has high performance, fast speed and cheap handling fees. The most important thing is that traffic can be found on Solana, and only when there is traffic can the price be set.

Just like no one says that Ethereum is a chain that only focuses on one track, because Ethereum was originally intended to be a general-purpose computer. After several years of development, we have become a general-purpose platform.

Foresight News: AI + Crypto, what do you think?

Lily : I think any new technology has a "Gartner Hype Cycle" (technology maturity curve). Each technology will have a very large growth when it is first discovered, then enter a trough period, then a rising period, and finally enter a stable development period. The blockchain field has also developed in this way. It used to be NFT, and now it is Meme and AI. They will exist in the long run, but they will all go through this process.

Technology Hype Cycle, picture source Wikipedia

I think AI is in its first phase now, it has huge growth and will be useful in the long run, but it may be overhyped . In fact, many innovative concepts were discussed similarly 10 years ago, such as AI+ trading, and now some related applications are beginning to implement these concepts.

Foresight News: Now let’s talk about the Solana ecosystem in detail. Backpack Exchange recently acquired FTX Europe’s derivative brand photo. Has the Solana Foundation participated and played a role?

Lily : Not at all. To be honest, you mentioned this news and I just learned about it from you. I should go and congratulate them. (laugh)

Foresight News: We launched Blinks in 2024, and the Solana hardware phone was also updated to the second generation, but did they stagnate after the popularity disappeared?

Lily : Blinks itself is a developer tool. It is not a direct-to-consumer product, but is used to support developers to use this technology to create new products that consumers can enjoy and use. In the long term, we have a lot of different features to integrate at Solana, and Blinks is one of the important developer features. It was released 6 months ago and is now an open source product. Many people use it behind the scenes to develop payment applications, issue coins and other functions. What makes it special is that it can be embodied and made available to consumers on any social media.

Foresight News: What about the Solana phone?

Lily : The mobile phone is not a product directly made by our foundation, but a project made by other teams. The second generation mobile phone Seeker has not yet been officially released. From the perspective of the foundation and the entire ecosystem, mobile devices are very important to the development of our industry and Solana, because consumers around the world mainly use the Internet through mobile phones. There are currently problems with the experience of blockchain on mobile devices. One is security issues, and the other is Apple and Google's APP Store policy issues, such as Apple charging 30% of profits, etc., which involves business models and software solutions. There is a team that is trying to solve the problem of integrating blockchain and mobile devices from scratch. Our foundation very much welcomes support from a variety of mobile phones and mobile hardware and software. There are currently mobile phone projects at different price points, such as US$99 phones for African and South American markets, as well as devices around US$500, and we welcome a variety of options to meet the needs of different consumers.

Foresight News: The recent Solana Hackathon winning projects are very popular among the community. What do you think?

Lily : I think our hackathon is still an activity focused on technology and development. It is normal for some people to pay attention to the money-making situation of the project, but we mainly cultivate it from the perspective of technical development of the developer community. And I still hope that more representatives from our Chinese-speaking region will appear at the hackathon, because I have always believed that the Chinese-speaking region is an important market.

There are two main markets in our industry, one is the United States and the other is the Chinese-speaking region. Since I joined the Solana Foundation three years ago, we have been doing global growth work to turn Solana into an international brand. We have worked in about 20 countries. If different markets are divided into talent markets and capital markets, only the United States and China have both. For example, Europe is a developer market for high-end talents, India is a developer market, and the Middle East is a capital market.

In the past four years, both the Chinese-speaking region and the U.S. market have been subject to regulatory restrictions, but now that the United States has opened up, there is also some room for technical cooperation in the Chinese-speaking region, so I am very optimistic about the Chinese-speaking region and hope to attract talents there, because talents are the most important thing in the ecosystem. valuable asset.

So our challenge is how to attract those talents, mainly based on what our projects can provide, because attracting talents is to hope that they can leave their current jobs and start a business, which is a very high requirement. I also know that different regions have different considerations, so we are constantly thinking about how to get Solana recognized by more talents.

Foresight News: There are many foundations in the industry. What are the differences between them and traditional foundations? What role does it play?

Lily : The foundation is first and foremost an entity, which provides a realistic possibility for blockchain projects to operate on the existing legal system, because existing laws require us to have an entity. I remember that Ethereum initially chose to register a foundation in Switzerland. This was a start and an attempt. Later, everyone began to follow suit and register a foundation in Switzerland.

Traditional foundations such as the Gates Foundation receive funds through Microsoft, mainly for tax optimization or tax avoidance. For example, if you make money, you can donate part of it to reduce taxes, or you can donate all of it without paying taxes.

The purpose of the blockchain foundation is completely different from that of the traditional foundation. Although they are both entities, the assets of the blockchain foundation are not earned by themselves, but allocated to it by the project. So its role is to be part of the community ownership and help provide public facilities, just like the government provides public services, such as supporting the development and coordination of public goods such as developer tools. Because many companies focus on their own profitable products and will not be responsible for these public affairs, foundations take on this role. From this perspective, the Blockchain Foundation is more like a city government. We are civil servants in the technical field, serving the community.

Foresight News: In many industries, gender issues and related news are a sensitive issue. What do you think of the topic of female practitioners in the blockchain field?

Lily : I have been working in this industry for 10 years. I have never thought that gender will affect my work efficiency or working conditions. Maybe my experience is relatively happy, but I have always felt that this industry welcomes people from all over the world. People from any background come to innovate and advance technology. Excellent developers in their 20s and traders in their 50s with extensive experience on Wall Street can work together. Blockchain cares less about previous background and more about contributions in the industry, regardless of gender, language, or background. , how old. Of course, crimes occur everywhere, and the person who harassed girls is just an example and does not represent our industry.

I think blockchain provides an opportunity to many people. If you come into this circle from any background, you will have equal opportunities. It is not equal results, but equal opportunities. In fact, this is not possible everywhere, because many countries have economic, political, employment and other restrictions. So I think the concept of blockchain is very important. It attracts many people not only because of technology and making money, but also because there is an equal vision that allows people from any background to enter an international platform.