An ambitious recent investment thesis from crypto-focused enterprise firm Multicoin Capital claims that Solana—currently a dominant $100 billion blockchain ecosystem—could eventually “outperform the foremost traditional finance (TradFi) players,” including NYSE, NASDAQ, and CME. The 17-minute read, published by Multicoin Capital Co-Founder Kyle Samani and titled “The Solana Thesis: Web Capital Markets,” outlines intimately why the firm believes SOL can capture value from every layer of the worldwide financial stack.
How Solana Could Topple NYSE And NASDAQ
Multicoin Capital has been a supporter of Solana since its seed round in May 2018. Noting that the network has grow to be “the fastest-growing developer ecosystem” while surpassing “Ethereum on most major on-chain metrics (trading volumes, each day energetic addresses, REV, TEV, DePIN payments, etc.),” Samani describes the newly released thesis because the firm’s fifth major SOL-focused essay.
“Now that Solana is a $100B asset… we desired to share our thoughts on how we’re underwriting SOL for strong returns even above $100B market cap,”Samani writes.
Multicoin’s core argument is that Solana’s architecture can reduce user fees by 90% to 99%—yet also enable the ecosystem to capture a market cap that surpasses many TradFi incumbents. Samani contends that while conventional stock exchanges capture fees solely for trading services, Solana’s decentralized nature allows it to accrue additional revenue from multiple financial protocols built atop its network.
Within the thesis, Samani stresses that the direct fee revenue from payments just isn’t the actual prize. Although the near-zero cost of a SOL transaction (roughly $0.001 per transaction) makes it attractive to merchants and consumers, these fees pale compared to high charges on mainstream money-movement systems.
“Still, he sees payments as an important vector for growth: “Payments are vital for driving adoption… they’re inherently viral,” Samani says.
In response to the report, a viral-like spread of wallet usage occurs at any time when people transact with one another, making on a regular basis payments a strong tool for onboarding recent users. This, in turn, drives more liquidity and volume toward the core DeFi applications answerable for generating the majority of profits.
Samani highlights conditional liquidity (CL)—pioneered by DeFi platform DFlow on Solana—as a significant breakthrough. CL allows market makers (MMs) to supply tighter spreads by ensuring that only “non-toxic” order flow, generally from trusted front-end partners, can tap into this liquidity.
“CL is a nascent concept… we expect it can grow to be the dominant paradigm for quoting liquidity on-chain,” Samani writes. This practice mirrors established TradFi approaches, equivalent to those utilized by Robinhood and its market-making partners. The most important potential impact is more favorable pricing for normal users, bridging one among the most important efficiency gaps between centralized and decentralized exchanges.
Samani argues that Solana’s upcoming Multiple Concurrent Leaders (MCL) framework—where several nodes concurrently produce blocks—will let global participants incorporate market-moving information more quickly. Unlike a single exchange server in a single physical location, MCL spreads leadership across the network, reducing latency for those removed from legacy finance hubs. In principle, this method should enable decentralized price discovery to outperform centralized matching engines.
Samani envisions Solana’s role not only as a “decentralized NASDAQ” but as a world platform for all financial services—from derivatives and lending to real-estate tokenization and traditional equities.
“Virtually all assets will trade on inherently global and permissionless systems like Solana, eventually,” Samani posits. He also highlights the potential for entirely novel asset classes to emerge, equivalent to fractionalized real estate—exemplified by projects like Parcl—or tokenized bottles of whiskey and collectible watches. This places Solana in a first-rate position to host the trading and management of all types of tokenized value.
A key focus is how blockchains like Solana capture revenue through maximum extractable value (MEV)—the worth validators or miners can glean from the ordering of transactions. With an expanding array of monetary protocols and capital markets running on-chain, Samani claims MEV will likely be the first revenue driver.
“Solana itself just isn’t providing financial services. But Solana creates the stack that powers tons of… of monetary services… And while gas costs are near 0… Solana directly profits from the expansion of those financial services via maximum extractable value (MEV),” Samani argues.
In response to the thesis, the Solana network earned greater than $800 million in “REV” (revenue minus token inflation) in the course of the last quarter of 2024, up from nearly zero one yr prior. That figure translates to an annualized rate of $3.2 billion—a formidable jump, considering few traditional assets are yet on-chain and lots of DeFi protocols on Solana remain in early stages.
In concluding the thesis, Samani asserts that Solana’s decentralized infrastructure can ultimately overtake incumbent exchanges by delivering:
- Lower fees and enhanced liquidity,
- Faster transaction finality across global markets,
- Support for an enormous range of tokenized assets,
- Latest financial products which can be entirely composable,
- A frictionless platform for permissionless development
“There may be an incredible opportunity to create a world and permissionless economic system… That’s the vision for Web Capital Markets. That’s the vision for Solana,” Samani writes.
Multicoin’s bet is that Solana’s continuing expansion will create a tidal wave of innovation that legacy venues—NYSE, NASDAQ, CME, and major payment networks—simply cannot replicate with their closed architectures. Whether this grand ambition fully materializes will depend upon regulatory adoption, technological evolution, and whether mainstream finance will embrace the following generation of on-chain solutions.
At press time, SOL traded at $249.50.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com