September witnessed the repositioning of the gods on Pump.fun.

After a long period of intense competition on the Solana Launchpad track, Pump.fun was surrounded by controversy and skepticism. However, everything changed in September—Pump.fun and its founder Alon declared in an almost violent aesthetic, "We are back, and stronger than ever."

For two consecutive days, Pump.fun's daily revenue exceeded that of Hyperliquid, ranking third among all DeFi protocols, only behind the money printers Tether and Circle. All of this stemmed from Pump.fun's "Project Ascend" core upgrade, which was rolled out on September 2nd, designed to be friendly to live content creators. Some users claimed that the earnings from a single Pump.fun livestream were equivalent to one month's revenue on YouTube, hence creators were particularly enthusiastic about the livestream feature.

On September 15 alone, the platform showered creators with over $4 million in cold hard cash. In a week, total creator revenue reached $19.3 million. How terrifying is this "earnings flywheel" effect? On that day alone, 21,000 new livestream tokens were released. According to real-time GMGN data, the number of tokens in the Pump.fun livestream "graduate" section with a market cap exceeding $1 million has reached 39. And that's not all. While Pump.fun madly sent money to creators, it also executed an aggressive token buyback strategy—since mid-July, it has spent $97.3 million repurchasing PUMP tokens, directly removing 6.67% of the circulating supply.

Just as Pump.fun rekindled the entire livestream track, Alon's latest interview was featured last night on Solana Alive, hosted by Mert from Helius, with two other interviewees including Axiom founder Henry Zhang and Multicoin partner Kyle Samani. BlockBeats has compiled this episode of Solana Alive into a text version:

Host: Hello, everyone, welcome to the second episode of Solana Alive and the first episode of Solana Alive hosted by a bald guy. I am Mert from Helius. Today, I will be chatting with three guests: Alon, Henry Zhang, and Kyle Samani. First, let's welcome our first guest—Alon.

Alon's First Interview after PumpFun Crazy Livestream Goes Viral Again

Alon (Pump.fun Founder): Mert, how are you?

Host (Mert): I'm doing well. You must be a very busy person. How have these days been for you?

Alon: It's been absolutely crazy. I mean, you know, we've also openly talked about it on X. In the past four or five days since the livestream took off suddenly, these days have been just insane. But it makes me more optimistic because, you know, that vision we've been outlining for years is slowly but surely coming to life.

Host: I actually really want to dive straight into that vision, to understand how you describe Pumpfun's future to yourselves. But before that, let's help everyone understand what exactly has happened in the past few days. You've recently caused quite a stir in the outside world due to the livestream and creator rewards. Could you help those who are not yet familiar understand what has happened these past few days?

Alon: Of course. Roughly two weeks ago, PumpFun made a very significant change to the protocol, allowing people to receive much more in creator rewards than ever before. The so-called creator rewards are essentially a way to bind the interests of creators with their fans and token traders. For example, every time a transaction occurs—whether it's a buy or a sell—a small portion is deducted and given to the creator. We called this update Project Ascend.

In this update, the fees for creators were essentially increased tenfold. Gradually, people realized that this could actually become a very nice revenue stream for them as creators. And back in May, we relaunched a livestreaming platform, and people have been playing more and more recently. Then, four or five days ago, this thing just completely took off.

Here's a perspective for you to compare, like the number of concurrent livestream channels. PumpFun has now reached about 20% of Kick, which is the world's second-largest livestreaming platform. A few days ago, I tweeted that we were only equivalent to 10% of Kick, but now it's 20%. So this growth is simply exponential, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

Host: This is insane, wow, everything happened so fast. What is driving all of this? Was there a specific viral moment, or did a bunch of creators join in and realize they could really make a good living off this, and also find interesting content? What truly drove all of this?

Alon: Indeed, some creators created viral moments, to be honest, there were too many to list. But I think the real tipping point was when everyone realized that "tokenization" is a very, very powerful tool that can take creators from zero to one hundred directly. Because they no longer need to wait for an audience size, nor do they need to wait to make money from a brand through funding or ad revenue share, right?

You know, on other platforms, like Web2 platforms, it usually takes several months or even years to start making money. But on PumpFun, you can start making money immediately, with no middlemen, no curation. The audience itself also has a direct incentive to find early creators because the earlier they discover, the more potential to earn money. That's the huge difference in platform incentives. Especially friendly to small and medium creators.

And this applies not only to streamers but also to the Meme Coin community, artists, startups, it applies to anyone who needs attention and capital. And the efficiency of the PumpFun platform in this regard is higher than anywhere else on the internet.

Host: Very cool. So how do you view this? For example, in the live streaming sector, everyone knows about the giant Twitch; in the short video sector, there's Kick, Instagram Reels, and even X Videos, they are all vying for attention. Do you think PumpFun is directly competing with these platforms, or is it a whole new category that combines finance and entertainment, creating something that has never existed before?

Alon: Yes, I do believe it's something entirely new. It has attracted a group of people who may not create content on other platforms at all. But undoubtedly, it is also competing with the biggest platforms on the internet. And it provides a better platform and better service for all users. That's why we see PumpFun growing at an unprecedented rate.

Host: Was all of this originally your vision? Or did you slowly discover it as you observed users using Meme Coins and how they organize community around them?

Alon: Of course, PumpFun has had a vision from the very beginning, which is to break through the pure crypto community and expand tokenized applications to all places that can change the world. As we progressed in our building process, we saw more and more user behaviors that led us to decide what to build.

For example, live streaming is one such example. People were actually trying live streaming on their own over a year ago, even though we hadn't officially built the platform yet. We noticed this behavior early on. So overall, we observe user behavior every day and pay more attention to traders than anyone else. When we see spontaneous behavior from users and creators, we adapt, which allows us to shape our mid-term strategy. But in the long run, our vision has always been firm: to make tokenization a better alternative and ultimately completely disrupt today's social media giants.

Host: Wow, "completely disrupt today's social media giants" — that's a very ambitious, very explosive goal, I love it. So let's talk about that now. You mentioned the word "vision" several times just now. So specifically, what is the vision? For example, during your weekly stand-up meetings at PumpFun headquarters, how do you encourage the team? How do you tell new members that this is our mission?

Alon: That's a good question. Our vision is to completely change the way creators create and interact with their audience. We believe everyone is a trader, and everyone can benefit from becoming a trader. Whether it's finding the next big streamer, the next big startup, or the next meme coin. We can provide more value to everyone through a blockchain-based tokenization approach.

So the audience can earn money with their skills while supporting the creators they love. And creators — whether they are a startup, meme coin, or streamer — can instantly cash out, with no middlemen, no censorship. This is the direction we are moving towards. We work towards this every day.

Host: Very cool. I'm looking at the comments section, and people's comments are quite funny. One says, "Alon + Elon = Megazord," and I have no idea what that means.

Alon: Haha, I have no idea either.

Host: And someone else says, "Alon is a god," and "Alon is the new generation Zuckerberg." These reviews are interesting. What do you think? Do you want to challenge Meta one day, like Instagram?

Alon: I am honored. Of course, I think it's not an exaggeration to say that we are already competing with giants like Kick and Twitch. Just a few weeks ago, a few months ago, people were saying it was impossible, and now it's happening every day. I don't want to hype it up too much, but I have indeed spoken with some Web2 big shots, and they are starting to notice us, notice PumpFun, notice our creators, and notice the buzz here. I believe we will not only compete, but we will win.

Host (Mert): As a founder, I have to ask, did you "see it all coming" before taking the first step? I just watched an interview or podcast with your co-founder, so I went to follow him, and then I found out that he actually messaged me back in 2023, asking about "shit coins." I thought to myself, what is this, totally unexpected. But now, you guys, I don't know the exact numbers, but you are probably one of the top three or top five fastest-growing "revenue growth" tech companies in history. First of all, this data is really exaggerated. But did you foresee it at the time? Did you feel like the opportunity was always there? What has this journey been like from day one to now?

Alon: That's a good question. I definitely didn't, we didn't—anticipate it coming this quickly. But looking back now, it all makes sense.

From day one, we believed that this market would be huge. From day one, we were very bullish on on-chain transactions. Before that, we were into the NFT space, and we were very bullish on NFTs at that time. Later, we entered the token space on Solana, and from day one, we were equally very bullish.

So we did see the difference between here and other areas very early on. Especially in the early days, many people thought these were just meme coins, just a joke, couldn't be sustainable, let alone become something meaningful. But we always knew there was something here. This further fueled our ambition to prove all doubts wrong.

Host: Did Solana help accelerate your business growth? For example, did it allow you to focus more on the product? I recall you may have been on another platform before, right?

Alon: That's correct. Before we created the PumpFun that everyone now knows and loves, we tried out a bunch of different ideas on the Ethereum chain. By the way, this is all public information; we have always been "building in public," you can go back and see my early tweets, etc.

Our success is largely due to our presence on Solana. Here we have a large number of traders, high activity, many excellent ecosystem projects, of course, a blockchain that can handle these loads, and a great user experience—all of which have undoubtedly contributed to the platform's rapid growth.

And it's not just that. When we initially started PumpFun, we came to Solana because there was already some activity in the so-called meme coin space on Solana. But now we've stayed and plan to continue staying here because the infrastructure has become very robust.

Host: I have to ask, you've made an unimaginable amount of money in a very short time, and you're still very young. How do you ensure that this doesn't disrupt your brain's reward circuit? What is still driving you? In a sense, you've already achieved "financial freedom." What force keeps you so passionate every day to build what you're building?

Alon: Of course, if we weren't mission-driven, if we weren't driven by that kind of ambition to "basically change the world and have a huge impact," we definitely wouldn't have made it to today. Even very successful startup companies face very, very difficult times during the building process—I haven't seen any that had an easy ride all the way.

We have experienced many moments where we were on the brink of "breaking," and many times we could have just stopped there and lived the rest of our lives very successfully. But that's not the path we want to take. We want to keep building, making it unprecedentedly greater. Yes, what I mean is that in the end, all of this is truly about creating impact, not for money or fame, status, or anything like that.

Host: I have to commend you. You've received a lot of flak—you're getting less now, of course, because we can say the token price has "turned green"—but you've really endured a lot of hate. I've never seen anyone on Twitter endure so much negativity for such a long time, at least a year's worth. Of course, there's also a lot of love, so maybe a more accurate term is "polarization." How do you deal with this? Do you really care? Does it affect you? Or are you so firm that none of that matters to you? What's Alon's mindset like?

Alon: This is a great question. I think there are two points.

First, if it's not coming from the users' voices, I don't care as much. User feedback is really, truly essential. So if users are disappointed, it does affect me because I and the entire team want to provide the absolute best for users—especially the traders who make all this possible.

Second, you need to have belief in what you are doing. What I mean is, especially... let's talk about live streaming because live streaming has recently started to take off. Even the smartest people in this field have had serious doubts about whether we are heading in the right direction. But in just a few days, I have seen them go from being bearish to completely bullish. And we have had that kind of belief from the beginning. This is just an example to demonstrate that sticking to strong principles, believing in yourself and your ideas, will pay off.

So even though you may receive a lot of hate, no matter what for, if you know that what you are doing is good, will make this ecosystem better, will make the world a better place, then there is no reason to be swayed by what a group of people say on X (Twitter) or anywhere else. Because ultimately, people are very short-sighted, and today's platform algorithms indeed encourage negativity. So the key is to talk to users, talk to truly important people in this industry, take their feedback seriously, while staying true to your principles, and continue to maintain your belief.

Host: Very well said, my friend. Alright, I have two final quick questions. Obviously, you are pushing forward with this live streaming thing and it seems to be going well. Give some advice to creators because when I grow up, I also want to be a streamer, or at least give it a try. For creators who want to start streaming, what advice do you have? Such as which niches to target, what tactics to use, how to get started?

Alon: That's a very good question. I think from a high level, it boils down to preparation, and, well, not being afraid to iterate, trying to absorb all the feedback from the community and striving to improve. I think if you are still very young, still at the early stage, you actually have a lot of "shots" to take. That's why I always say it's worth trying to create your own token, or something similar.

But if you already have an audience, then it's worth reaching out to people like me, or anyone with a PumpFun badge, and talk to our team to better understand how the whole thing works. Because "issuing a token" is definitely a very different thing. You know, live streaming on PumpFun is very different from elsewhere, of course, this has its benefits, but you need to respect that, you need to respect the traders on our platform, you need to take some necessary precautions.

Host: Yes, so to be more specific about this, can you give some examples?

Alon: For example, when you issue a token, make sure to be very honest with people about your intentions, be transparent about your plans. If you have resources, are ready, have a streaming schedule, then tell everyone about these transparently; if you don't, it's also best to be transparent, do not overhype or overpromise.

Those things may not seem like a big deal, especially if you come from another field, such as Web2, where they are actually encouraged. But in crypto, the way things operate is very different and can potentially be harmful. So we take this very, very seriously. One big thing we've been doing over the past few days is proactively reaching out to creators, guiding them to ensure they are moving forward in the right way, trying to maximize the chances of success for all creators—not just streamers, whether it's a Meme Coin, an ICM project, or anyone else.

Host: Great. Okay, last question. What is the name of your chat group? —Haha, just kidding, don't answer that. Let me switch to a more positive note: For entrepreneurs who see what you have accomplished and want to follow a similar path, what entrepreneurial advice would you give?

Alon: This question is hard to boil down to just one piece of advice. I would say, always, always act with the highest standard of integrity, while also shipping fast and breaking things. That's not one piece of advice, it's two, right (laughs). Always operate with the highest level of integrity, while iterating quickly, daring to make mistakes, trying everything possible. At some point, something will always "click" (be accepted by the market). That's how we are: we've had a bunch of ideas, and no one really cared until we got to Solana, and then it was very successful.

Host: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and what you've done. Also, very excited about what you're going to build next. My friend. Fantastic, thank you so much Alon, and thank you to everyone here today.

Less Than 10 People, Axiom Breaks the Fastest Revenue Growth Record

Host (Mert): Very cool, I hope the content just now was helpful and fruitful for everyone. I really liked the quantitative energy I had just now (laughs). I think we'll soon have Henry up here. Oh, well, the protagonist is already here. Henry, buddy, how are you?

Henry (Axiom Founder): I'm doing good, how about you?

Host: I'm good too. I wanted to ask, have you been on a podcast or live stream before? You seem hard to get a hold of.

Henry: No, this is my first time.

Host: Oh, wow, then I am honored, and so is the Solana Channel. Your first public appearance is with us. You are the founder and CEO of Axiom. Axiom is the fastest-growing revenue company in YC (Y Combinator) history. YC is the accelerator that has incubated a series of companies like Stripe, Coinbase, Airbnb, and more.

So, let's start by introducing yourself to everyone. Not many people really know the founder of Axiom, at least not on a personal level no one knows Henry. What has brought you to where you are today? What experiences have led you here?

Henry: Well, I think it goes something like this: I started trading cryptocurrency on my own in the last year of high school. Then, in college, I met Preston E, who was also studying computer science, we were roommates. So we often worked on small projects ourselves because the classroom content wasn't that interesting. We have always been interested in fintech and in finding an edge in trading, whether it's building our own tools or providing alpha to other traders.

After doing a few personal projects, we interned at a big tech company for a while and then started Axiom. I actually started by following Ansem's coin trade, and then I thought maybe we could make something better than Photon. So that's how it started.

Host: So you were working at a big tech company at the time, while also using various trading bots and apps on the market, and then you basically said, "Actually, I think we can do better," is that right?

Henry: Yes, at that time I was on Dex Screener, found it to be very, very bad. Then I looked for other alternatives and found only Photon. So our idea was: we can do better.

Host: What was the execution process like? Because I guess you know, many people see a terrible website and then say, "Damn, I can do better." But from having the idea to actually making it, the middle part is actually the craziest. So how did you go from this idea, to applying to YC, to launching the first product? What was this process like?

Henry: We worked extremely hard, really, 16 hours a day, for several consecutive months. In fact, many people don't know that we had released a V1 back then. However, the results were not good, with a bunch of issues, overall the product was not good enough. Then we applied to YC, thanks to YC's Tom, who was our partner; he saw our vision.

I think during the building process, our ambition and vision also grew. Of course, we are mainly focusing on building a meme coin now, but in the future, we want to become a more expansive product. The YC experience was very good, it gave me a lot of understanding about startups. For us, this experience was completely different from a typical AI company, because in that batch, there were only 5 crypto-related companies, and we were the only consumer-facing crypto application.

YC forced all of us to live in one house, really fully immersed. The difference between V1 and V2 is: we took a step back, interviewed a large number of traders, asked them what was missing, what features they wanted to see.

Host: Interesting, wow. I'd like to discuss the vision and the future, but before that, I saw a job posting for Axiom, and one of the requirements seemed to be living with you all in an apartment? Was it in Texas or somewhere in the US? In other words, everyone really has to live under the same roof to work? Is this your intensity requirement?

Henry: Yes, that's right. I think nothing is more effective than "everyone working in the same room." Even in an office, commuting weakens this feeling. So our job posting is very direct, but the compensation we offer is also high, matching the required level of intensity.

Host: Well, I am not a professional trader myself, I occasionally place a long position on SOL, but overall I don't trade much. I am curious because there are various trading terminals, trading apps, Telegram bots on the market, you are a latecomer, but you quickly outperformed many competitors, and very quietly, until everyone could no longer ignore you. How do you think you achieved this? In a crowded market, how did you stand out? What are some problems that you solved that others did not pay attention to, but traders are very grateful for?

Henry: That's a great question. I think the difference between us and other teams is that I firmly believe that you don't necessarily need a super unique insight or idea.

While many accelerators or incubators say you need it, I think what's more important, especially in the transaction space, or in many spaces, is real executional power. We are super focused on execution. Another thing that is often overlooked is "taste." For example, at the beginning, many people could not adapt to our UI, and there were many complaints. But over time, now people see that our design decisions have become the standard, and there is a reason for that.

Host: This is very interesting. We will have Kyle come up later to talk about this topic, which is actually similar to what American automotive tycoon Ford said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." And you are essentially saying: we want to introduce a whole new user experience, even if initially everyone needs some time to adapt. That's very cool. So now, how would you describe Axiom? For example, to someone who is not familiar with crypto, how would you introduce it? Would you say "We allow you to trade any asset on Solana, possibly cross-chain in the future," or something else?

Henry: What you just said is the wording we would use now. And because of a job posting and a very, very strong headhunting agency, we now have more engineers who can expand into other areas. Soon you will see us in other areas as well.

Host: Very interesting. So the next question: today you can enable people to trade almost all assets on Solana. What is the vision? For example, when you talk about the future roadmap with your team, or with new employees about the next one to three years, how do you describe how big this company will become? Are you aiming to be like Robinhood, or do you want to define a new category?

Henry: Yes, it's basically the Robinhood model. Many things we want to do are similar to Robinhood's arguments. The difference is: some teams just follow where there is income, and we are truly and very seriously pursuing this goal. Of course, right now it is mainly meme coin, but there are many other things people trade. To become a true "one-stop application" that can allow users to confidently put all their assets in it and have a seamless experience, we must support more categories of assets.

Host: Alright, let me ask another question that I am personally curious about, which may seem less relevant to the audience. If you have questions, you can post them in the chat room, and we will select some to ask. You just mentioned that in your YC batch, you were the only consumer crypto app. At that time, most were AI, right? And about a year and a half ago, Jason posted that famous tweet: "If you are into crypto, pivot to AI." In Silicon Valley, it's harder to justify doing crypto than AI, in my experience, maybe because my risk preference is zero (laughs). What do you think? What opportunities do you think crypto can bring to the next generation of founders, users, and traders?

Henry: I think this is a classic answer: Crypto and DeFi provide opportunities far beyond the existing financial system. The reason we are on Solana is because the ecosystem here offers what we are looking for. Additionally, we have collaborations with very advanced teams such as Helius, Solana Research Labs, and we are very optimistic about Solana's future roadmap. In short, this is a huge opportunity because those who succeed can redefine the user experience of the financial system.

Host: That is very inspiring. Well, I want to ask some entrepreneurship-related questions, but before that, I would like to ask something personal. You guys made money so fast, maybe even faster than Pumpfun, faster than Hyperliquid. You were in a Texas apartment at that time, a few engineers working hard every day. Did you really anticipate today's success, or were you also surprised?

Henry: Well, I don't think any founder would say, "We definitely will be the fastest-growing company." Some people might say it, but actually achieving it is completely different. For us, honestly, we sometimes doubted it. But as soon as the product went live and we received very enthusiastic user feedback, we realized that this thing could really be big. Since then, we have been sticking to one principle: whenever something new appears, we want to be the first to give traders an advantage so they can trade in this new category. Looking back now, it's not surprising, but at that time, it was indeed surprising.

Host: I also asked Alon and Toly: you made so much money so quickly, and historically many people who make money quickly start misbehaving, even causing a collapse in the industry. Obviously, you guys haven't been doing that, like over-issuing stablecoins excessively, for example. But the question is, what drives you when you wake up every morning? Money is no longer an issue, what else do you want to change?

Henry: For me, the drive is to create a better trading experience. I think this is a huge opportunity, just like the CEO of Robinhood—he could easily stop expanding, but clearly, he hasn't. The reason is simple: whoever can execute the best, whoever can control the distribution channel, whoever can seize this huge opportunity. For me, another thing is to "be the first company to define this experience," which is important to me.

Host: Alright, then I'll ask one more question about the team. How many people are you now?

Henry: Less than 10, including new hires, probably close to 10.

Host: To achieve this with less than 10 people is crazy. How do you recruit people? You can't just post a job ad and call it a day, right?

Henry: Our consistent approach has always been extremely resourceful and hands-on. When we had limited funds before, I would personally reach out to independent developers on Discord and Reddit. Now we conduct cold outreach on LinkedIn, such as reaching out to Solana developers whom we closely follow for their open-source contributions. Additionally, we maintain a large recruiting funnel. We also came across a very effective headhunting agency, and most of our new employees now come from there.

Host: It sounds like you're the type of person who remembers anything that bothers you and will not rest until you tackle it yourself. In your opinion, what is the most common mistake founders make in the crypto space?

Henry: I think it's overly focusing on "marketing." Many people, especially after fundraising, would try to buy a safety net by spending money on influencers or agencies. But if the product is not good, this is basically useless. I've seen too many cases like this. My standpoint is: a good product will market itself. Users will genuinely enjoy using it, and then they will want to tell their friends, "Hey, why aren't you using this? I have to recommend it to you." That's the attitude founders should have.

Host: Well said. This is especially crucial in consumer-facing sectors, where word-of-mouth is powerful. Alright, one last question. Many of your loyal users are watching this live stream. What can they look forward to in the coming months?

Henry: We will be improving performance globally to achieve absolute optimization. We have heard the voices of our users and are working hard to enhance the platform. Additionally, we will be quicker to follow emerging trends, such as the recent Pump CCM. Also, another branch of our team is working on some other asset classes, so users can expect some exciting collaborations in the future, bringing a whole new trading experience.

Host: That's amazing. Henry, thank you very much for choosing to make your debut appearance here. You are doing great, keep up the good work.

Henry: Thank you, Mert. It's been a pleasure chatting with all of you.

Multicoin's $1.65 Billion SOL Treasury Bet

Host (Mert): Guys, these guests are all younger than me but much more successful, which is not great for my ego (laughs). Is Kyle in the house? Kyle, long time no see, my friend. How have you been? How does it feel—seeing these young founders making more money than you?

Kyle Samani (Multicoin Managing Partner): Oh man, I'm currently doing some soul searching.

Host: And now we have Mr. Kyle Samani joining us. For the audience, I actually had Kyle on my podcast last Sunday (two days ago), so I've already asked you many of the questions I'm going to ask now. I'll try to ask some new ones. But obviously, Kyle, what you're doing now, you are the newly appointed Chairman of the Treasury company DAT (Treasury-as-a-Service), code-named FORD. Let's fill in the information first: What is it? What does it do? Why do this? Why are you doing this?

Kyle: Hello, everyone, I'm Kyle from Multicoin. I'm currently in Washington DC, and I'll be meeting with people in Congress in the next few days. I recently took on the role of Chairman of Ford Industries. Ford Industries is a publicly traded company listed on Nasdaq, with the stock code FORD, F-O-R-D. Yes, it sounds like that car company.

Over the past few months, I've been getting to know the management of Ford Industries, and they realized an opportunity: to work with Jump, Galaxy, and our Multicoin to build a leading treasury strategy for Solana and digital assets. So we came together and raised $1.65 billion in a matter of weeks. We announced this deal last week and also completed the delivery last week. The funds have now been injected into the company, and the company has used it to buy some SOL. Of course, we have many other plans besides this.

Host: Alright, let's talk about those plans. You're also in DC now, and later I'd like to talk about the situation over there. People in the chat are spamming "Samani mode" "Saylor mode," quite interesting. What are your plans? What do you aim to achieve? What is the future for Solana and Ford?

Kyle: The future of Solana is actually the dream Anatoly had back in 2017-2018. Back then, we called it the "Decentralized NASDAQ." However, in hindsight, that was a somewhat nostalgic description. This concept has now evolved into what we call the ICM, "Internet Capital Markets."

I believe the Internet Capital Markets is a grand vision that is more imaginative, forward-looking, and better able to grasp the excitement that this technology may represent. What is the Internet Capital Markets? It is a globally unified ledger, operating 24/7, permissionless, and programmable. You only need a smartphone and an internet connection to trade any asset from any piece of software. Essentially, it brings those native internet properties into finance. In the past 30-40 years of the software era, finance has always been operating in a strange little bubble: only operational for limited hours, unlike other parts of the internet; financial software systems have been strictly regulated and controlled. However, with cryptography and permissionless consensus, we can bring these native internet properties into all forms of fund flow, financial flow, value flow, and transactions.

This is Solana's vision, and Ford Industries hopes to contribute to driving this forward. I believe the most important thing Ford Industries can do is to truly build the future. Approximately six to seven weeks ago, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins gave a speech titled "Project Crypto" to an audience of 4,000 SEC employees. In that speech, he told all employees: we must migrate the U.S. securities market to operate on the blockchain. Think about what this means: it is a difficult and lengthy process involving many stakeholders. Obviously, there are players like NYSE, NASDAQ, but also DTCC, various banks, publicly traded companies, brokerages, and so on. This is essentially a complex and heterogeneous multi-stakeholder network.

The opportunity I realized is that when I entered this role as Chairman of Ford Industries, we can actually accelerate all of this. So we are now very committed to making Ford Industries the world's most blockchain-native public company. I cannot discuss specific details at the moment, but broadly, this will involve both the capital markets side and the company's operations side. On the capital markets side, it means we intend to tokenize our own stock. Once we tokenize our stock on Solana, we will do a full suite of activities such as dividends, equity governance (shareholder governance), stock splits, financing, etc., all realized on-chain. On the operations side, we hope to move core business operations onto the blockchain.

This means on-chain transactions — by the way, we've already done it: the first thing we did after settlement was to buy $1 million worth of SOL on-chain through Dflow. We routed to multiple Prop AMMs and bought this $1 million of SOL. I posted the TXID of this transaction on Twitter a few days ago. But it's not just about buying and selling SOL, we also want to run the entire business process such as Payroll, vendor payments, etc., on Solana to prove to the world that everything is achievable. This way, when the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth company joins, there is a viable path to follow.

Host: Wow, first of all, this is a lot of information, and secondly, this is a very clever "lead by example" marketing strategy: you go ahead and do it — what others will eventually do. Very cool. I did see that Dflow transaction and I also give a thumbs up to those Prop AMMs, they are truly very exciting new developments. Alright, lots of content, I hope my quant folks have clipped this segment.

Alright, Kyle, I also wanted to ask: you recently attended the All-In Summit and gave a speech — on such a big platform, I feel that the speech actually received relatively little attention. I guess the video will be released soon. And now you are in DC or have already been there discussing with them. Compare the views of New York, San Francisco, and DC on Solana: How do they view us, how do they view crypto?

Kyle: You know that old image of the "blind men and an elephant," right: Different people touching different parts and thinking it's something different. I feel the "Internet Capital Market" is that elephant, and everyone sees it from a different perspective.

Wall Streeters see it as a trading system, they, in general, like it; people in DC would say, oh, this thing is new and a bit scary, I need you to help me understand it, maybe it's not that scary after all; people in San Francisco would say, dude, this thing is so cool, it's the intersection of distributed systems, cryptography, consensus, and so on.

Everyone has their own perspective, and our job is to help them understand and get involved. I'm in DC now, will be meeting with some very important figures, advancing the crypto agenda in DC. We are promoting the Clarity Act and several other initiatives.

Host: Understood. I would be very disappointed if there weren't 50 different "elephant meme" tokens on-chain (laughs). Solana community, step it up, give me some elephant memes, remember to tag me. You mentioned earlier that you will deploy some of the capital to DeFi, but more broadly to run the business on Solana. Part of it obviously resembles the "Saylor strategy," you're here to win, so you want to hodl SOL. You mentioned a concept that I find particularly interesting — I've already stolen and retweeted — which is the M asset, or some other strategic M.

Kyle: I think this is inevitable. I don't know, there are probably around 20 DATs operating online now (fluctuating up and down), and I wouldn't be surprised if it became 40 or 50 in the not-so-distant future. But I don't think the market can support that many. So, I believe consolidation is inevitable, and the most logical acquirer would be other DATs.

Host: Very interesting. I just remembered a question I didn't ask: When you communicate with DC regulators or even people from Europe or elsewhere, a common bias in the past (especially in January) was — Solana is just a meme coin. Obviously, you and I disagree: there are many other assets and a rich ecosystem on Solana. How would you respond to these people? Assuming they are asking in good faith, not the trolling type on Twitter, just people who are not up to date, what are your key points?

Kyle: I think you have to look at this with a financial history perspective. Look at the history of finance: as long as people think they can play some kind of 'game' in the market and benefit, they will do so. This can be traced back to the era of commodity trading centuries ago. The earliest stock markets in the US can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, initially developing well and then facing the Great Depression. After the economic collapse, scammers tried to exploit the stock market for profit. Our solution was through a bunch of laws: the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Commodity Exchange Act... These four legislations, even 90 years later today, are still the cornerstones that support the rules of American capitalism and the financial system.

I emphasize these, not to say that finance is bad, but to make everyone understand: smart yet unethical people will always try to exploit the financial system. So, it relies on regulatory bodies, self-regulatory organizations (such as FINRA in the US), and industry players like exchanges, banks, and brokerages, to collectively establish a set of rules to encourage healthy market behavior. This is an endless 'cat-and-mouse' game: there will never be a logical end point. Markets will evolve, and the cat-and-mouse game will evolve with it. Moving into this new paradigm of crypto, the game has changed, people are adapting slower, but that's okay — everyone will adapt, and we will ultimately get a net improved system.

Host: Very cool. Alright, I want to conclude with a segment of 'Bull Run Blood for Solana Manlets.' But before that, let's 'cool down' a bit. We are obviously Solana bulls. Frankly, you might be more bullish than me, which is awesome. Setting our positions aside, what do you think is the area where Solana most needs improvement right now? You are also a VC, investing in projects, and patching network weaknesses. What do you think needs to be improved as soon as possible?

Kyle: Right now, the top priority on my mind is: tokenizing Ford Industries' stock (our stock symbol is FORD). Everyone has been talking about stock tokenization for 10 years; Ethereum is 10 years old, and people have been discussing this topic for almost 10 years, but it has not been meaningfully implemented yet.

Our good friends at Galaxy, about a week or two ago, have already tokenized their equity using Superstate on Solana; obviously, the scale is still relatively small at the moment. I believe the most important thing for the Solana community and ecosystem in the short term is to truly push it forward. Over here, we are advancing our in-house equity tokenization; then, we need to collaborate with ecosystem partners—wallets, liquidity providers, etc., to ensure on-chain trading liquidity; next, we need to collaborate with DeFi protocols to ensure that such equity can serve as valid collateral in various DeFi systems.

So, we need to pull up the entire chain. Everything in finance requires multi-party cooperation, and everyone needs to start running and push forward in a somewhat coordinated manner. I am very fortunate to be in this position and have this network of relationships to try to coordinate all parties and truly get this thing off the ground.

Host: Great. Now let's play a little role-play. Suppose you are on a CNBC show, and I am a host who is a bit more attractive than Jim Cramer (a famous bald CNBC host) and slightly less so than Andrew Ross Sorkin (laughs).

Kyle: You are indeed more entertaining, Mert, I admit that.

Host: Very good (laughs). Now you are on stage, imagine Tom is backstage waiting, and you want to make him "nervous." You want to send a message to all the "boomers" out there: Why will Solana continue to grow from here? Why Solana? How would you deliver your golden thirty seconds?

Kyle: I think the statement is straightforward: when Ethereum was born in 2015, it was a groundbreaking technology. Solana has learned a lot from Ethereum, but they have not iterated the system fast enough. Today, Ethereum is over 10 years old (just over ten years old two to three months ago), and it can still only handle about 20 transactions per second (TPS), with variations up and down. This is clearly not enough to support global finance, payments, and so on. This conclusion is straightforward. Solana is not yet "perfect," but at least Solana today is more credible to support 8 billion people participating in these internet capital markets. With the recent GENIUS Act passing (we hope to promote the global adoption of stablecoins), if you want a billion people to use stablecoins, you must implement it on a chain that can support throughput and scalability.

Talking about "Project Crypto" and the Securities Market: Chairman Atkins wants this to happen. The Solana network can currently process approximately 10 billion transactions per day (with fluctuations), and we are quite optimistic that this number will see significant growth in the coming months and years. Look at the actual "transaction volume" settled daily by major stock exchanges worldwide (NYSE, NASDAQ, London, Singapore, etc.), which is less than 10 billion. Of course, the total volume of orders placed and canceled will exceed 10 billion, but the actual transactions are less than 10 billion/day. What I mean to convey is that we have a technological threshold, and there is at least a reasonable argument to settle not just the U.S. but global securities trading volume. We still have a long way to go, but we are clearly not at 20 TPS. If you believe in the vision of crypto, believe in the global internet capital markets, you must have a scalable chain. Solana is currently the most performant and scalable chain—this has been repeatedly proven by various metrics.

Host: Alright, our team is already speeding up editing this part (laughs). Kyle, thank you very much for joining us. Wish you all the best in DC and good luck to Ford. For those who want to reach out to Kyle, remember to send him a bunch of long analogies on Twitter, preferably without any context, the more elaborate, the better.

Kyle: Thanks for the invitation, Mert. Thanks, everyone. Nice to see you all. Goodbye.

Host: Alright, thank you all for participating. Hope you enjoyed this "second edition but first edition bald version" of the Solana live stream. There will be many more to come. Send in your suggestions if you want to join. Thank you very much. Right now, I feel like I'm being "played off" at the Grammys or Oscars (laughs). Good night, goodbye, goodbye.

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