Blockchains should refocus on their original purpose: finance, Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, wrote on Thursday X, rejecting years of narratives that attempted to present the technology as a widespread replacement for the modern Internet.
“Blockchains have always been and always will be a technology for finance,” Liu wrote, describing financialization and the opening of capital markets as the sector’s fundamental value proposition.
Liu, who will speak at Consensus Hong Kong next week, was particularly dismissive of past efforts to introduce blockchains into gaming and “web3” consumer narratives, calling them intellectually lazy and too reliant on marketing rather than real market creation. She criticized the idea that simply placing existing applications on a blockchain, often under the banner of “read, write, own,” would automatically generate value, arguing that meaningful adoption requires the creation of entirely new financial markets.
The comments come at a time when cryptocurrency prices are falling, with bitcoin, ether and other major tokens sliding amid macroeconomic uncertainty and diminishing speculative demand. Despite the economic downturn, institutional interest remains strong, as traditional financial firms continue to explore tokenization, on-chain settlement and payment rails.
Liu’s remarks also come as other industry leaders narrow their own view of blockchain’s usefulness. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently signaled his desire to double down on Ethereum’s Layer 1 scaling roadmap, shifting attention away from a sprawling Layer 2-centric approach that has dominated Ethereum’s strategy in recent years. This shift reflects doubling down on fragmented ecosystems to focus on usability and consistency.
Taken together, these comments highlight a broader recalibration underway across the industry: As prices fall, industry leaders are doubling down on their claim that the technology behind it all still has utility.
Read more: From ‘Ethereum sidekick’ to standalone stars: How Vitalik Buterin’s latest pivot is forcing Layer 2s to grow
