Last week, Tako conducted a Mandarin-speaking AMA (Ask Me Anything) session with Solana Foundation Chair Lily Liu, a top Chinese-speaking KOL (Key Opinion Leader) on the platform.

This AMA covered the following topics:

· Discussion on the core content of Proposal SIMD-228

· Postmortem of LST and SIMD-228 Proposal Failure

· Outlook on Solana's ecosystem development

· Solana and the United States

Discussion on Proposal SIMD-228

Q1

Mable: Summary of the core content of SIMD-228:

1. Issues with the existing staking model: Solana's current inflation mechanism is fixed, starting at 8% per year and decreasing by 15% annually until stabilizing at 1.5%. As of March 2025, the inflation rate is approximately 4.68%. This fixed model cannot adjust flexibly based on the network's actual participation (e.g., staking ratio), which may result in either excessive inflation or insufficient incentives in certain scenarios.

2. Dynamic inflation mechanism: SIMD-228 proposes linking the inflation rate to the staking ratio (i.e., the percentage of SOL tokens staked), adjusting dynamically through a formula: When the staking ratio is below the target value (e.g., 33%), the inflation rate increases to incentivize more staking; when the staking ratio is above the target value (e.g., 50%), the inflation rate decreases to reduce unnecessary token issuance. The goal is to maintain the staking level necessary for network security while avoiding overpayment.

Lily Liu: Yes, this is a good summary of the mechanism change.

The main reasons supporting this proposal can mainly be seen here:

https://x.com/MaxResnick1/status/1896316441869381914

The proposal was submitted around mid-January. This is the first significant economic policy change for the Solana protocol since its launch.

The reason why everyone is more motivated to propose this idea is also related to last year's SIMD-96. At that time, the proposal terminated the 50% burn of the block reward (previously it was a 50% burn). Now, these block rewards are all given to validator nodes, which is equivalent to increasing the staking APY, so some people believe it is more necessary to readjust the inflation curve.

SIMD-123 is also in the voting process, and if passed, it will further allocate block rewards to stakers rather than validators. Overall, as time goes on, block rewards are becoming increasingly important for validators' economic income.

Q2

Mable: (Continuing from the summary of SIMD-228)

· Expected Effects:

High-staking Environment: The inflation rate may be significantly reduced (even below 1%), reducing selling pressure on tokens and increasing the long-term value of SOL.

Low-staking Environment: The inflation rate increases to attract more participants and ensure network security. Overall, this mechanism makes inflation more adaptive to market conditions rather than relying on artificially set fixed parameters.

· Transition and Implementation:

The proposal suggests a gradual transition from the current model to the new model, originally planned for 10 epochs (approximately 3 weeks), which was later adjusted to 50 epochs (approximately 100 days) to reduce the impact of sudden changes.

Lily Liu: Great summary. Here is some additional background information on validator economics:

Validator income usually comes from three aspects:

1. Commission (share of inflation)

2. Priority Fees

3. MEV (Miner Extractable Value)

The sum of these incomes is called "Real Economic Value," which is the total economic reward obtained by running a validator node. Obviously, to ensure the health of the network, validators need to be able to earn a profit; otherwise, they would not be willing to bear the fixed costs and opportunity costs of running a node.

Over the past five years, with the development of the network, the share of priority fees and MEV in validator income has been increasing.

The current staking rate is approximately 65%. According to the proposed changes, if the staking rate drops to 40%, the inflation rate will still remain at the same level as it is now.

Q3:

Mable: (Continuation from the previous discussion on SIMD-228) 5. Controversy and Impact:

· Supporters' Viewpoint: They believe this will improve the network's economic efficiency, reduce inflation's dilution effect on token value, support DeFi development, and attract long-term investors.

· Opponents' Viewpoint: They are concerned that the reduction in inflation may decrease staking rewards, affect small validators and decentralization, especially posing a threat to network stability during low staking rates.

· Impact on Validator Economics: It may lead to some small validators exiting, but supporters argue that having 150-200 profitable validators is sufficient to maintain network security.

Lily Liu:

Here is a summary of the “Pro” viewpoint

https://x.com/MaxResnick1/status/1896316441869381914…

Here is a summary of the “Con” viewpoint

https://x.com/calilyliu/status/1897792990585790560…

Here is our discussion from last week's X Spaces

https://x.com/calilyliu/status/1897147753886547991…

Q4:

Cheshire (@0xCheshire): Hello, I read your tweet about SIMD-228 and I admire your profound understanding of economics, which led me to discover how interesting the Solana ecosystem is. So my question is: What do you think is the current core growth challenge for Solana? If you need to define the top 3 goals, how would you define Solana's future vision?

Lily Liu: Solana is the infrastructure built for the Internet capital market. I believe that in the future, the entire industry will be led by Bitcoin and Solana.

Bitcoin will become "digital gold," mainly used for value storage, while Solana will become the core technical platform of the decentralized finance network.

Today, Solana has already processed 85% - 90% of the industry's transactions. However, many people are still focused on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystem, so when they learn about this fact, they are often very surprised.

To achieve the vision of "Internet capital market infrastructure," it must become the best destination for capital.

The core logic is:

· Become the best melting pot for assets;

· Become the best platform for utilizing these assets (including products, basic components, and protocols).

In other words, liquidity will attract more liquidity. If you have rich and high-quality assets, innovators and capital markets will be attracted. They will develop interesting financial products based on these assets, which will in turn attract more assets and developers.

Our future focus is on building assets in the mid-risk range to enhance the entire ecosystem.

Q5:

Mable: You have previously expressed some thoughts on proposal SIMD-228, calling it "not mature enough." So, when you first reviewed this proposal, what was your first concern? Whose interests do you think SIMD-228 represents?

Lily Liu: Yes, this was my tweet from last week, summarizing my concerns about the proposal.

https://x.com/calilyliu/status/1897792990585790560…

When I first reviewed the proposal in January, I had some doubts. In fact, at that time, I didn't think anyone would take this proposal seriously because the initial content of the proposal was mostly qualitative analysis, casual assertions, and speculation—I initially thought that for such a significant and far-reaching economic policy change, we should demand a stricter, more evidence-based argument.

However, it later received more attention, and more and more people began to participate in "fine-tuning" some parameters in the new inflation curve and discussing when it would take effect.

Summarizing my view:

SIMD-228 was based on some one-sided arguments, mostly considering the benefits to the network layer but not fully considering the negative impact this would have on the on-chain asset sub-ecosystem.

For most public blockchains (except Bitcoin), the ecosystem can be divided into three subparts:

· Network: The actual validation clients, the computer network running the blockchain

· Product / Technology: Comprised of various developers, applications, and communities, making the ecosystem vibrant and building useful products and revenue models that can only exist in Web3

· Asset: The native token of that blockchain. It's well known that many people are interested in cryptocurrency and view primary chain tokens as a way to participate in global scalable technology

These three sub-ecosystems require different core skills:

· Network Layer: Infrastructure engineers

· Product Layer: Application developers, founders, non-technical builders

· Economic Layer: Capital markets, business operators, and various (retail or institutional) buyers

Because of the vast differences in skills and backgrounds behind these three sub-ecosystems, one can imagine a layer of "fog" between them. They are aware of each other's existence but cannot quite see through each other's true dynamics, only having a vague sense of "the other side is also doing things," but still feeling a strong sense of distance.

These three sub-ecosystems are interconnected, and their relationships are complex. If the token asset performs poorly, it cannot attract developers; without excellent technology and an active developer community, there is no sustainable user demand or token value proposition.

In summary, I believe that SIMD-228 focuses too much on the benefits to the network layer while overlooking the impact on the ecosystem's economic layer. Perhaps this is not surprising, as the direct voters are validators (rather than stakers), and validators naturally belong to the network layer. Furthermore, this discussion mainly took place on public platforms such as Discord, Twitter, Solana forums, where institutional individuals are usually not very active.

Q6

Mable: You hinted that SIMD-228 might have a negative impact on SOL's performance during the network's critical growth stages. How do you think this impact will manifest, such as on validators, stakers, or even the entire SOL ecosystem?

More specifically, why do you think this proposal will reduce institutional investors' confidence in Solana staking?

Lily Liu: In my previous post, we mentioned the three major sub-ecosystems of blockchain:

· Network Layer

· Product Layer

· Economic Layer

Let's discuss each of them separately:

· Network Layer

-- Pro: By adopting a dynamic curve, it can make the "network security pricing" more efficient.

-- Con: Small validators overly rely on inflationary rewards (commissions) to make a profit rather than on MEV or priority fees. Therefore, some people are concerned that under this dynamic mechanism, the profitability of small validators will decrease, leading to their exit and further centralization of stakes in the hands of large validators.

· Product Layer

I believe that the impact of 228 itself on the application/builders layer will not be significant unless a product (such as Jupiter) itself also runs a validation node, in which case it will be affected to some extent.

· Economic Layer

The main reason I participated in this debate was to clarify the potential impact of SIMD-228 on the asset economic layer.

My view is that "Dynamic Pricing" is highly advantageous for efficient allocation of resources such as "network security." However, for blockchain assets, "Fixed Income" can reduce volatility, thereby mitigating value erosion.

Whether intentional or not, the current state of the Solana ecosystem is as follows: there is a strong entity with growth potential (SOL) that also offers attractive and predictable returns. While there is no perfect traditional finance analogy, some have described it as having both stock and bond characteristics.

After all, we are newcomers to the blockchain space, and to attract more attention, high returns can quickly capture everyone's gaze.

Q7

Mabel: From your perspective, what alternative ideas or adjustments would you propose for SIMD-228 to achieve a better balance between network security and maintaining a healthy token economy? If you believe that the current high staking reward rate can better foster the growth of the Solana ecosystem, when do you think would be the best time to make adjustments? In other words, do you support the originally designed gradual reduction of staking rewards?

Lily Liu: Starting from January 1, 2026, the annual inflation reduction will be increased from 15% to 25% or 30%. In simple terms, this measure addresses the high inflation concern widely raised by network engineers, while also enhancing the predictability of asset returns through pricing.

LST and the Post-Failure of SIMD-228 Proposal

Q1

Hermit.crane (@ZKSgu):

Currently, 90% of Solana's staking is in native staking rather than LST, resulting in a significant amount of liquidity being locked up. Does the foundation view this state as healthy, or would they prefer to see more LST dominance? If the former, why? If the latter, how can this be improved?

Lily Liu:

Solana's LST (Liquidity Staking Derivative) ecosystem is most developed in the crypto space. One reason is that Solana's high inflation rate and staking annual yield (compared to other blue-chip cryptos) incentivize innovation. Personally, I would like to see more LST innovations as security and liquidity are the two most critical aspects of a blockchain ecosystem, and LST can harmonize the two. Of course, LST does not have the same full substitutability as native SOL, leading to some degree of market differentiation. Additionally, institutional holders may be very risk-averse, hence resistant to any smart contract risk (including LST). Under similar conditions, I hope to see more use of LST. This will take time to develop. Sanctum has made significant contributions in this regard; they allow issuers to create customized LST, thus beginning the integration of LST with personal products and brands. This is where infrastructure begins to merge with consumer goods.

Q2

Jims Young (@JimsYoung_):

1. After the overall switch to a dynamic inflation model, will there be any corresponding adjustments to node rewards? Why this change? How should node participants adjust to this?

2. What is Solana's overall direction after Meme and Payfi? Is there a possibility of adjusting the chain's mechanism based on use case scenarios?

Lily Liu:

The vote has concluded, and Proposal 228 did not pass, meaning the inflation curve will not see any changes for now.

However, staking rewards have seen an increase. Several months ago, Proposal SIMD 96 was passed, which made block rewards no longer burned but instead go directly to validators, thus increasing the total staking rewards. Last week's passed Proposal 123 gave validators the option to choose (but not obligation) to directly allocate these rewards to stakers.

The significance of block rewards to the validator economy is becoming increasingly clear. Proposal 228 was proposed at this time, in part, to offset the revenue increase from Proposal 96. The proposers also aim to reduce inflation "leakage" due to taxation and centralization of infrastructure providers.

The taxation argument is as follows: in the United States, ordinary income is taxed up to 37%, and staking rewards are taxed upon receipt. If these rewards (in theory) are directly attributed to the underlying asset, they will be taxed at the long-term capital gains tax rate (21%) and only taxed upon eventual sale. This would reduce selling pressure on SOL tokens.

The argument for inflation "leakage" is that exchanges and custodians have significant pricing power, allowing them to take a large share of inflation rewards (e.g., an 8% commission), benefiting the ecosystem's wealthy individuals the most, who may not have contributed to the community.

These are the main supporting reasons for Proposal 228. With the proposal not passing, the community will draft new proposals.

Currently, the community has reached a high consensus in two directions:

1. Inflation rate should be reduced.

2. Voting fees (currently 2 SOL per day) should be decreased.

Reducing the voting fee (fixed and retroactive) would disadvantage small validators. It is hoped that after a significant reduction in the voting fee, the profitability threshold could be lowered, allowing more validators to enter the network and compete for staking shares.

Regarding your second question about what comes after meme and PayFi. PayFi is not a short-term trend but rather a long-term trend. I believe the true value of blockchain lies in building a robust financial ecosystem for medium-risk scenarios. We even joke about "making blockchain boring" and focus on constructing a global internet finance layer.

Q3

BlockBeats Asia (@BlockBeatsAsia):

Lily from the Solana Foundation visited the Tako Chinese influencer circle. In response to Proposal 228, she mentioned increasing the annual inflation rate reduction from 15% to 25% or 30%. In simple terms, this measure addresses the high inflation concern commonly raised by network engineers while also enhancing the predictability of asset yield pricing.

Lily Liu:

Since Proposal 228 did not pass, a new inflation adjustment proposal will be introduced. This is a preliminary idea aimed at reducing staking APY and inflation rate (which is widely recognized by most people) without significantly impacting the quality of SOL assets.

Solana Ecosystem Development Outlook

Q1

Midnight (@silverfang88):

Background: Since last year, there have been many rumors that the Solana Foundation has intervened to support many memes. Note: This support is not the usual official traffic support like likes and retweets, as it's mostly said that the Solana Foundation (or some other core people) directly manipulated SOL, such as constantly hearing that the Solana Foundation supported bome, wif, or manipulated various other memes (like Silly Dragon).

Question 1: Is this true? Are there any undisclosed secrets in the collaboration between many projects and SOL?

Background: For a huge project like Trump, in fact, only a few core circle members in the U.S. know about it, and many speculate that this resource is brought by the Solana Foundation and then distributed by jup+meteora.

Question 2: Did members of the Solana Foundation participate in the early-stage coordination and issuance of Trump? Meanwhile, with jup and meteora taking so much from people (2 billion USD), what is the Solana Foundation's stance on this?

Background: Recently, CZ went all in on BSC and also retweeted a lot of memes on BSC, which was also controversial. As a key figure in the foundation, how does Lily view the situation where Toly and Raj, as core founders, have also been consistently endorsing and retweeting many projects (many of which have rug pulled and even seen a significant number of scams)?

Question 3: How does Lily view the competition from BSC and the issue of founders endorsing some exit scam (even anonymous) projects, and why would Raj and Toly shill these projects?

Lily Liu:

The Solana Foundation has never supported BOME, WIF, SILLYDRAGON; this is purely a rumor. The Solana Foundation has also not been involved in issuing the TRUMP token; likewise, it is a rumor.

I have not seen Raj and Toly shill projects everywhere. They have a strong belief in the long-term success of the network and ecosystem and do not wish to gain short-term gains at the expense of the ecosystem and retail investors. This sets them apart from many (perhaps the vast majority) of crypto projects.

I have great respect for @BNBCHAIN and its achievements. The @binance team has always been our old friends; we have grown together in this industry. They have achieved amazing results, and any team that can contribute to the innovation and popularization of DeFi and the decentralized economy is doing very important work. I believe that given @cz_binance and Binance's industry position, they can play an extremely valuable advocacy role in driving DeFi forward.

Q2

Charles (@charles48011843):

I am very glad to have the opportunity to participate in this AMA and it is an honor to be able to directly discuss the future of Sol with Lily Liu, the chair of the Solana Foundation. Currently, do you think Sol's ecosystem foundation has an advantage over the mainnet? Previous memes have spurred liquidity development, and many have achieved decent results through Sol's memes. However, memes are only temporary, and I think they are not long-term. In the future, will you have new directions or innovations to stimulate Sol's users to have a DeFi summer on Sol? And now, many are building their own public chains, how will you respond to the emergence of new public chains?

Lily Liu:

Hi Charles, thank you very much for participating in this AMA!

In my experience in the Solana ecosystem over the past four years, I remember Solana was once seen as a decentralized finance (DeFi) chain, then it became an NFT chain, followed by a gaming token chain, then a depin (decentralized Internet of Things) chain, and recently many people are talking about meme tokens.

But if we put all of this together, we will find that Solana is truly an "everything chain."

It should be this way: except for Bitcoin, all other public chains are trying to become a blockchain that can support global financial infrastructure. We can call this "the infrastructure of the capital markets." If you want to be such an infrastructure, you should not only focus on a certain type of asset or application area, but you should build an environment that can provide liquidity for all assets, and have a variety of financial products, native components, and protocols across the risk spectrum.

In the past 6 to 12 months, we have seen many people interested in meme tokens, which can be said to be "all about price, not about value," very straightforward.

In fact, a large part of our work involves collaborating with various financial institutions and stablecoin issuers. Compared to meme coins, these activities may not seem as "exciting," but they are the very foundation that can truly build the global financial infrastructure.

Q3

Calman CalmanBTC:

Solana is generally considered the most likely among all new public chains to challenge, or even surpass, Ethereum at present, but we have also found a shortcoming: many real-world assets, such as RWA assets, the largest stablecoins, etc., still primarily exist on Ethereum. Many people still believe that the real world has more confidence in Ethereum and lacks confidence in Solana. What is your take on this issue? Does Solana have any corresponding measures in this regard?

Lily Liu:

We have put a lot of effort into the markets in the United States and Europe because traditionally these places have more mature, international capital markets. The most popular form of RWA (real-world asset tokenization) so far has been the money market fund, which is usually the first product many large financial institutions want to tokenize.

In addition, there are some more customized RWAs, such as Home Equity Line Of Credits (HELOCs) provided by Figure, or permissioned assets based on private blockchain platforms like R3/Corda.

There will be more related news in the future, but the reason it has not been fully disclosed yet is that large institutions often need several months to support new platforms like Solana in their internal processes. Fortunately, this work is being widely and comprehensively advanced.

Another idea about RWAs is that even if they have a large issuance or Total Value Locked (TVL), there may not be many actual transactions, due to the nature of these assets.

For example, an asset like a HELOC (Note by Tako: Home Equity Line Of Credit), which is commonly translated in Chinese as "Home Equity Line of Credit," refers to a revolving credit line obtained with the home equity (i.e., the market value of the home minus the outstanding mortgage balance) as collateral, does not trade as frequently as stablecoins or low-threshold money market funds, purely because of the different nature of the asset.

Therefore, there is currently a "barbell" phenomenon emerging on the blockchain:

· On one end are assets where price exceeds value, such as meme coins, which are almost purely price-driven without much intrinsic value;

· On the other end are high-value assets that are not heavily traded or lack pricing, such as some RWAs.

We need to fill the risk range in the middle, and we believe that bringing unchained equities onto the blockchain is an asset direction with tremendous potential.

Q4

Sanyi.eth (sanyi_eth_):

Lately, I have been discussing with friends, believing that a significant reason for this bull market cycle is Ethereum's inaction, while Solana has been actively innovating and supporting projects, leading to its rise. Looking at the DeFi/meme/gamefi/RWA/L2 tracks, Solana's ecosystem has seen a significant growth compared to before, which can be evidenced by VC investment preferences. However, this round of meme coins did bring a lot of fresh blood to Solana, but the insider trading caused by VC accumulation behind celebrity coins (Trump/Brazilian President) has made users' alignment lose confidence. So I have a few questions:

1. Will the Solana team implement any regulatory measures in response to this type of activity in the future?

2. For users drawn in by meme hype, does Solana have any new ideas and strategies to ensure the retention of these users?

Lily Liu:

Solana is infrastructure for the "Internet Capital Markets," and the Solana Foundation is not responsible for the application layer.

You can draw a (early-stage) internet analogy here: the internet is open infrastructure; everyone globally uses TCP/IP and HTTP.

This means that online there is all kinds of content, some of which is universally recognized as "non-controversial" while there is a lot of controversial content.

On this, "uncensoring the TCP/IP protocol layer" is absolutely not the solution. We have come to accept that apps do content moderation—it's their job at the application layer, not the job of the base infrastructure.

If you view "assets" as "financial content," then all assets should have the opportunity to go on-chain and then have apps decide which assets to display or support in their products.

In reality, to some degree, this already exists, such as centralized exchanges only listing a portion of blockchain assets.

We are currently very focused on stablecoins and RWAs (Real World Asset Tokenization), as well as on developing new financial primitives, products, and protocols to build a richer risk spectrum between the current dichotomy - meme coins (only price, no value) and money market funds.

Q5

Snowball (xueqiu88):

Thank you for the invitation. Today is March 12, a day of great significance to WEB3, and also the prelude to the birth of DeFi Summer that year. History always astonishingly echoes, and now the SOL ecosystem is standing at a crossroads similar to ETH's in the past: choose security or pursue profit?

As a member of the SOL community, I am more looking forward to the second summer of DeFi blooming in the SOL ecosystem. Chairwoman Liu, if the community decides to embrace a high-staked scene, do you think SOL's DeFi has the opportunity to rapidly attract users and funds like the MEME ecosystem, becoming the core driving force of a new wave of trends? From the perspective of the foundation, do you believe the innovative and executive power of developers and the community are already sufficient to support the achievement of this goal?

Lily Liu:

I believe the future of Solana DeFi will not mirror Ethereum DeFi from 2020 and 2021. The future of Solana DeFi should not be limited to only the Solana native token. Our vision is to build infrastructure for a global internet capital market, which means the asset scope should not be limited to Solana native assets, and not even restricted to cryptocurrency-native assets.

We welcome cryptocurrency-native assets like Bitcoin and Dogecoin—chains based on UTXO that do not have native smart contracts, thus currently lack an active DeFi ecosystem. We are also partnering with Real World Asset (RWA) issuers to bring traditional financial assets onto the blockchain.

We should not view "DeFi" as a domain segmented by underlying chain technologies. The true goal has always been to develop infrastructure that can function as a global state machine, becoming the best habitat for capital. This is an extremely challenging task, but so far, I have not seen any other ecosystem able to execute at the required speed.

Q6

YAKING168 (永赚的希爷):

1. The current growth of TVL on public chains has hit a bottleneck; should a pump mechanism or meme mechanism like a bonding curve be adopted to drive rapid TVL growth?

2. How do you view Pump.fun and Polymarket? Do they play crucial roles in the Solana ecosystem?

3. Does Toly have any interest in launching a coin on Pump.fun?

4. With SIMD-228, the inflation rate will become more market-driven. What impact do you think this will have on Solana's staking ecosystem and long-term value?

5. In your view, the crypto industry is moving towards a new cycle. How is SOL positioning itself to stand out and maximize value in this wave?

6. The community's most pressing question—when moon? (Jokingly asked)

Lily Liu:

Regarding Total Value Locked (TVL): I believe TVL is now an outdated metric that cannot accurately represent a robust on-chain economy. Since 2020, TVL has been treated as the most crucial metric, and all protocols have been vying for the lead in TVL.

However, using only TVL to measure Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is incomplete for the following reasons:

1. Static TVL lacks capital efficiency. Consider two extreme examples: If you have $1 million to invest, would you prefer to allocate all your funds to a protocol with a fixed 4% APY (such as Aave) or invest only $500,000 to achieve the same return (adjusted for risk)? TVL cannot measure profitability and capital efficiency.

2. Everyone's earnings come from the flow of funds, not the existing supply. Validators profit from transactions, especially contentious ones; protocols profit from transaction activities. In a broader sense, value comes from usage, not just fund locking.

Therefore, the goal of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) should not solely be to "increase TVL."

Regarding Pump.fun and Polymarket: Pump has contributed significant trading activity to the Solana ecosystem. Polymarket is not on Solana.

I highly doubt Toly will issue tokens on Pump.fun.

SIMD 228 did not pass. This summarizes my view on dynamic inflation. The link you mentioned currently cannot be successfully resolved, possibly due to issues with the link itself or related to network conditions. I suggest verifying the legitimacy of the link and trying to reload the page. If the problem persists, you may need to try again later.

Solana is the infrastructure for the Internet Capital Market. We are not an application chain, not Layer 2, not sharding, and not a multi-chain architecture. Nearly all other blockchains have compromised their vision for short-term go-to-market (GTM) convenience, or have so far failed to effectively execute their go-to-market strategy.

The Internet Capital Market is the original vision of blockchain, and currently, I believe that apart from Solana, no other project has been able to effectively realize this vision.

Q7

leo-the-horseman (@LeotheHorseman):

On the Solana ecosystem, apart from the ecosystem related to Pumpfun, the projects I pay the most attention to and participate in are on Daos.fun.

In my opinion, this use of a bonding curve for fundraising and managing funds through a DAO is a way to bridge the Solana ecosystem and early-stage equity investment (or RWA, crowdfunding). It has seen a series of agent innovations (such as ai16z), and its sustainability is better than pump.fun.

I wanted to ask, does Solana have any plans (such as daos / acc) to bring web2's innovative targets with real revenue to the chain, allowing users to participate early and have 100x opportunities, while also promoting web2 innovation?

Lily Liu:

Q8

Roger Bojack (@roger9949):

1. Regarding the SIMD-228 proposal's dynamic inflation model controversy: The SIMD-228 proposal aims to balance security and economic efficiency through a dynamic inflation model, but you have previously expressed opposition in public discussions. In your opinion, what negative impacts might the current model have on the profitability of small stakers and validators? Does the foundation plan to mitigate this issue through other mechanisms (such as subsidies or tiered incentives)? SIMD-228 may further affect validator distribution. Is the foundation concerned that dynamic inflation could lead to centralization of staking toward large nodes? How will future technical upgrades (such as QUIC protocol optimization) work in conjunction with the economic model to ensure network stability?

2. The Vision of PayFi and the Discrepancy with Current Implementation Progress: You introduced the PayFi concept at the 2024 EthCC conference, defining it as a "real-time transaction paradigm combining payments and finance," but more recently, you have acknowledged that PayFi has not truly achieved the original intent of facilitating payments and is more focused on transaction scenarios. How does Solana plan to shift PayFi from "token exchange" to actual payment applications?

3. The Impact of the Trump Administration's Regulatory Shift on the Solana Strategy: With the potential regulatory favorability under the Trump administration, how does the Solana Foundation view the opportunities in this political environment and will advance its market positioning?

4. Pumpfun's Contribution to and Risk-benefit Assessment for the Solana Ecosystem: Pumpfun, as a platform for issuing meme coins within the Solana ecosystem, has significantly boosted on-chain transaction volume and user activity in the short term but has also sparked controversies regarding speculative bubbles, the demystification of crypto technology, and project sustainability. How do you evaluate the long-term value of such platforms for the Solana ecosystem?

Lily Liu:

1. Impact on Small Validators: This is detrimental to small validators, especially given the current voting fee (2 SOL per day), which is regressive. This is why the vast majority of small validators oppose Proposal 228.

2. About PayFi: PayFi fundamentally does not focus on token swaps — this is the first time I've heard of PayFi being equated with token swaps. There are many real-world payment applications — from integration with POS systems used by actual merchants, to projects like huma.finance that leverage on-chain liquidity to facilitate T0 cross-border settlements. Everything in the cryptocurrency space will attract those focused on quick gains; token swapping; those kinds of activities. This scenario plays out in every cycle, in every vertical. However, we need to focus on true builders who are innovating to create a more accessible financial system.

3. U.S. Market Environment: This is a great opportunity for cryptocurrency, especially Solana. We will be heavily investing in our presence in Washington, D.C. We will also be heavily investing in the broader U.S. market. We have a strong presence in the U.S., which remains one of the most critical capital and talent markets in the world.

Solana and the U.S. Government

Q1

Mable: I'm really curious what you discussed in Washington! Any directional information you can share with us is highly welcome! In terms of Solana's legitimacy and mainstream promotion, is there any news we can look forward to?

Lily Liu: In Washington, everyone knows Solana and recognizes that we have become a beacon and leader in this industry! Now, with a policy environment that is more friendly than the past 4 years (even the past 15 years), we will invest more in our presence in Washington.

Q2

Mable: Can you tell us more about the conference Solana will be hosting in New York in May? Is this conference mainly targeted towards the U.S. and local teams?

I also want to know your thoughts on the relationship between the foundation and national governments — how do you view Solana maintaining a close relationship with any powerful sovereign government?

Lily Liu: Yes! We will be hosting a grand event in Manhattan in the third week of May.

The U.S. is one of the two most important markets in the crypto industry (the other being MCM, the China market). The U.S. has an extremely deep talent and capital base; most other markets only have either talent or capital advantages, which are hard to come by simultaneously, and their scale is far from that of the U.S.

However, over the past four years (and even longer), the United States has been anywhere from "unfriendly" to "actively resistant" towards crypto. Now, the situation has finally changed. This is a rare window of opportunity that allows us to truly step into the spotlight and advocate for a decentralized future. Furthermore, Solana has a strong influence in the United States, established itself as a leader in the industry, and its technical prowess has been proven.

Finally, here is our introduction to the Accelerate conference:

Accelerate 2025 will be the largest crypto conference this year targeting the U.S. market. It is expected to have over 3000 attendees, along with an invite-only developer side event focusing on the group of founders, policymakers, and institutions in the U.S. led by Solana.

We will bring together founders, investors, and policymakers to set a roadmap for crypto innovation in the coming years that embodies both an "accelerationist" and "responsible" spirit.

This article is a contributed piece and does not represent the views of BlockBeats

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia