In the 17th year of the Crypto Era, where does Solana's path to survival lead?

Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010 )

As the crypto industry enters its 17th year, competition among public chains has gradually shifted from the old battles over funding scale, TVL, developer count, and ecosystem projects to a multi-dimensional contest spanning protocol revenue, protocol profit, ecosystem scale, and emerging assets.

After passing through DeFi Summer, GameFi Summer, NFT Summer, Inscription Summer, and Meme Summer, the competitive landscape of public chains in 2026 has gradually crystallized into a "four strong, one weak, plus others"格局 — comprising the Ethereum mainnet ecosystem, the BSC ecosystem, the Ethereum L2 ecosystem represented by Base and Robinhood Chain, the Solana ecosystem, the Hyperliquid EVM ecosystem, and other networks.

DefiLlama data shows that among the top 10 public chains by revenue over the past 30 days, excluding Canton (whose revenue lacks statistical reference value due to incentives) and Tron (which consistently ranks high due to stablecoin demand), the rest are Robinhood Chain, Base, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, BSC, Hyperliquid L1, and Arbitrum — largely consistent with our categorization above. Among these, Solana, which once rode the Meme wave to prominence, has fallen to 6th place in revenue rankings (5th when excluding Canton), with its 30-day revenue amounting to only about one-tenth that of Robinhood Chain.

All this is to say one thing: Compared to the Robinhood Chain, BSC, and Base ecosystems — which enjoy booming trading volumes driven by tokenized stock Meme asset gameplay and serve as the "final listing destination" backed by various exchanges or trading platforms — Solana needs to forge its own new path forward if it wants to go further in the public chain competition.

From what I can see, I'd offer three reference suggestions, bluntly put: keep "dogs" under your banner, win over allies, and strike at opponents. Beyond that, quirky moves and clever little tricks — like Solana co-founder Toly's previous active endorsement of Green Dragon and more recently STONK and ZCAT — are also indispensable.

Move One: Keep "Dogs" Under Your Banner — Harness the Power of the Masses

Previously, Odaily reporter Golem briefly covered Solana's current predicament in tokenized stock Meme development in the article "Solana Gets Anxious: Official Backing Propels a Golden Dog Past $100M Market Cap in No Time, Toly Wants to Court Robinhood," and also mentioned StonkFun, a tokenized stock Meme asset issuance platform that has performed notably well in the Solana ecosystem recently, along with platform assets like STONK and ZCAT tokens.

Recently, we also provided a detailed introduction to Pump.fun's custom trading pair feature for tokenized stock Meme asset issuance, launched in partnership with Backpack's Sunrise platform and the xStocks platform. Recommended reading: "Reviving the Solana Ecosystem: Pump.fun Enters Tokenized Stock Meme Pairing."

Combined with news that Raydium's LaunchLab — under the Solana ecosystem's leading DEX platform — now supports arbitrary token trading pairs on Raydium, this is precisely the first move Solana should make and has already begun making: driving an increase in both the quantity and quality of tokenized stock Meme asset issuance platforms under its banner.

Robinhood Chain has Pons and Long; BSC has Flap and Four.meme; Base has o1.Exchange and Bankr. And now, Solana has finally gotten StonkFun and Pump.fun doing the work of issuing emerging asset classes. For a chain once known as the "number one Meme coin chain," these efforts and incentives are far from enough.

Of course, Meme coins that merely devour liquidity and enrich a select few are far from sufficient. More importantly, the Solana team should find ways to leverage its US regulatory advantage to onboard more high-quality US stock assets and incorporate them into stock tokenization liquidity pools, further expanding the asset pairing range within its ecosystem.

What Robinhood Chain can do, Solana should — and can — do better.

Currently, since Hyperliquid sparked the on-chain Perp DEX boom, the Solana team's efforts in pursuing innovation and change have been far from adequate. After the emergence of tokenized stock Meme coin assets and liquidity pool pairing gameplay, Solana's official stance has been anything but proactive, and it has not initiated any ecosystem support or incentive programs to encourage Solana ecosystem developers to experiment with related trading platforms and innovative gameplay.

So keeping "dogs" under your banner here is not meant pejoratively — the "dogs" here refers more to trading platforms, legitimate projects, and mature developers with the technical development and ecosystem-building capabilities. In ecosystem development, builders matter most.

Move Two: Win Over Allies — Acquisitions, Equity Stakes, or Revenue-Sharing Partnerships

Recently, following NYSE parent company ICE Group's equity investment in OKX, US stock exchange Nasdaq prominently announced a $100 million investment in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, bringing the latter's valuation to $21 billion.

If major US stock exchanges can splash out to take equity stakes in crypto exchanges, why can't a public chain like Solana use similar equity investment, investment, acquisition, or revenue-sharing partnership models to complete its "final piece of the trading puzzle"?

Previously, Polymarket also spent a hefty $112 million to acquire QCX, a US-compliant stock exchange, to return to the US market. As a US-based company, why can't Solana follow suit, win over its own allies, and build a "final liquidity destination" for tokens within the Solana ecosystem?

Not to mention that in order to push for compliant US market entry, Hyperliquid's policy center and the Hyperliquid team held in-depth discussions with Kraken, which has stated it is working with the US CFTC to offer US-registered users certain crypto perpetual contract products related to Hyperliquid's market and its underlying Layer 1 blockchain through the CFTC-regulated platform Bitnomial.

At the very least, other crypto exchanges on the market are also potential partners Solana can approach. With support from exchanges or trading platforms, tokens in the Solana ecosystem — whether legitimate DeFi projects, Meme coins, or tokenized stock Meme coin assets — will all have their own "listing endpoint," just as BSC ecosystem tokens have Binance, Base ecosystem tokens have Coinbase, and Robinhood Chain on-chain tokens have Robinhood.

With this move, Solana can also avoid the "liquidity chokehold" dilemma imposed by other public chain ecosystems or exchanges, and find its second growth curve — rather than clinging to outdated concepts like "high-performance network, internet capital markets, AI Agent payment network" and stagnating.

Many times, problems that money can solve are not problems at all.

Move Three: Strike at Opponents — Unite One Faction, Divide Another, Strike a Third

For this final move, let's discuss it purely from a business competition and industry competition perspective, without any value judgments or personal preferences.

If Solana were an internet company and the entire crypto market were the internet tech industry, then beyond self-development, slowing down competitors' and rival products' pace of development, and striking at opponents in a reasonable, lawful, and compliant manner, is a necessary part of "business is war."

In this regard, I believe Solana can take action in two main directions:

First, from the angle of dividing the competitor camp, Solana could absolutely form an offensive-defensive alliance with the relatively weaker Base & Coinbase, while maintaining head-on competition with Robinhood Chain & Robinhood and BSC & Binance. On one hand, strengthen its own ecosystem's internal development forces; on the other hand, follow, imitate, or even pixel-level clone competitors' popular projects — such as Launchpad platforms and Meme coins. This has been the customary approach of both the Base and BSC ecosystems all along.

Second, from the angle of disrupting competitors' builder forces, just as Pump.fun poached talent from the fomo platform with high salaries, Solana's team could also try this approach: on one hand, increase the economic returns for token developers and creators — similar to Pump.fun platform's creator tax — with Solana's team offering corresponding economic incentives; on the other hand, Solana's team could also launch various generously funded, all-inclusive trader competitions to encourage Meme coin players, crypto traders, and crypto KOLs to come to the Solana ecosystem to build, trade, and develop innovative gameplay.

Whether it's poaching with high salaries, joint ventures and acquisitions, or using regulatory investigations and other off-field tactics to affect competitors' development — this is how both the Chinese and American internet industries operate. The crypto market is just a "slightly smaller internet finance industry."

Finally, Solana's team can of course also have a few other clever little tricks up its sleeve:

For example, Solana co-founder Toly could take a page from Robinhood CEO Vlad by personally lobbying US public company executives, encouraging them to enter the Solana on-chain stock token arena as institutions or companies — Circle is a ready-made example of this;

For example, Solana's team could partner with the fomo platform to create a dedicated "Solana Meme Money-Making Leaderboard" on that platform, separately tracking the top 100 most profitable traders in Solana ecosystem Meme coins;

For example, Solana's team could even join forces with well-known market makers like Wintermute, GSR, and Galaxy to collectively manipulate Meme coins in other ecosystems — the recent LAPTOP Meme coin launched by Hunter Biden on the Base ecosystem is a reference example.

In summary, from the dimension of industry competition, all lawful, compliant, and reasonable means are methods Solana's team can employ. Of course, if Solana's team could incubate or cultivate more high-quality projects, pioneer more innovative gameplay, and bring more traditional financial market liquidity and capital into the crypto market, that would be even better.

Although the more you do, the more mistakes you might make, proactively seeking change is always better than sitting and waiting for defeat. In this regard, Solana's team is currently mired in the shackles of technical upgrades, and its attitude of disengaging from community communication urgently needs to change. Recently, Bonk Guy stated regarding Solana's team and ecosystem moves that he "has changed his bias against Solana and started turning bullish" — as a diamond hand and staunch supporter of Solana ecosystem Meme coins BONK and USELESS, there must be a certain element of "frustrated by unrealized potential" in this.

I believe the crypto market that many people envision is an industry that is fairer, more diverse, more innovative, and full of wealth opportunities. For many developers and projects in the Solana ecosystem, revitalizing the Solana ecosystem is an unshirkable duty; for Solana, as a pillar of the crypto industry, building and developing the crypto market is equally an unshirkable duty.