30s Summary

Solana is not only attracting meme coin creators, but also serious interest from financial institutions, according to Hadley Stern of Marinade Finance. Designed for high-volume transactions with low costs and fast speeds, Solana is seen as the more stable option despite Ethereum’s regulatory clarity in the U.S. Leah Wald, CEO of Sol Strategies, suggests that Ethereum’s unpredictable transaction fees might drive institutions towards Solana. Solana’s builders highlight its potential for structural innovations, with the platform’s dev team focusing on user needs and product scalability.

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Solana has been making a name for itself, not just because it’s a hotspot for meme coins. Big financial institutions are also drawn to the network, keen to build their products on it. Although it’s newer than Ethereum, Solana doesn’t have the same hiccups when it comes to transaction speed and cost.

You might be mistaken in thinking Solana is just for meme coins and Ethereum is for financial institutions. While Ethereum has been championed for tokenization by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink—his firm launched a tokenized fund, BUIDL, on Ethereum—Solana has been grabbing headlines thanks to the success of pump.fun, a protocol letting users create meme coins in just a few minutes.

But Solana isn’t just a playground for meme coins. Financial institutions are showing real interest in it too, according to Hadley Stern from Marinade Finance, a DeFi protocol based on Solana that services SOL token staking. Despite both Ethereum and Solana hosting very few traditional financial products, there’s significant interest from institutions in Solana, says Stern, who’s previously worked for Fidelity Digital Assets and BNY Mellon.

Tristan Frizza, founder of Solana-based decentralized derivatives exchange Zeta Markets, mentioned how many people are now building on Solana and the interest from institutions during the network’s biggest yearly conference, Breakpoint. Despite Ethereum being the go-to for financial institutions due to it being the largest and oldest smart contract blockchain, Leah Wald, CEO of Sol Strategies, suggests Ethereum’s ongoing uncertainty around transaction fees could leave institutions feeling uneasy, and turn them towards Solana instead.

Wald highlights that in the US, Ethereum benefits from more regulatory clarity than Solana does, which may reassure institutions. However, this doesn’t guarantee Ethereum’s suitability for projects with high-volume transactions, which might be better suited to Solana due to its low costs and fast transaction speeds. Despite this, the security of Ethereum’s blockchain being approved for spot ether ETFs this summer will likely reassure institutions, even if funds inflows into these new funds have been disappointing.

Builders on Solana believe that the platform allows more structural innovations. Solana’s developers care about addressing user needs and are always ready to create products that scale. Frizza believes that if another crypto craze hits, we’ll see a lot of interesting apps coming out on Solana. They’re aiming to break down user experience barriers and make trading on Zeta Markets feel as easy as Robinhood. Stern agrees, suggesting that the success of meme coins on Solana is proof that developers are working at the highest level. He added that the Solana Foundation does a better job of guiding the ship than Ethereum does, letting a thousand flowers bloom.