Solana's Explosive Growth Just Hit Critical Mass with Nick Ducoff

WEBVTT
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Currently settlement for a transaction on Solan it's about four
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hundred milliseconds, but there's another new technology being built which
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will re reduce that to about one hundred fifty milliseconds.
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And the reason that is so important is two hundred
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milliseconds is the point at which a human feels something
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is generally instantaneous. Since the first Solona ETFs went live
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a few weeks ago, they have seen inflows every single
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trade and day since, and I think it really shows
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the demand and interest in Solana, which is really exciting
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to see.
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Why did you pick Solana, you know, as opposed to
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go work and there's a lot of blockchain projects out there.
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Bilan is the fastest and cheapest, most scalable Layer one blockchain.
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visit the link in the description. Hey folks, welcome into
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the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward and
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joining me today is Nick Dukof, who is the head
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of Institutional Growth at the Salona Foundation. Nick, great to
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have you.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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Yeah, Nick, I am excited to dive into the latest
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and greatest around Solana. Lots happening in the Slana ecosystem,
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but I would love to kick it off with your
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background tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from,
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and your professional background.
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Sure well, thanks again for having me on the podcast.
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Really excited to join you today. My name is Nick
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dukov I, Lead Institutional Growth, Salona Foundation. I joined the
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Salana Foundation in the summer of twenty twenty three, so
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about six months after FTX, which was a really interesting
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time to join Salana and it's incredible to see how
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far the ecosystem has come since then. Prior to joining Solana,
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I was a venture capitalist working at a Jill's Fund
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leading crypto investments, and prior to that I had a
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couple careers. But I started my career as a securities lawyer,
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working out deals like the MySpace acquisition by Fox. I
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then left the practice in twenty ten to take a
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shot at entrepreneurship, and it was very fortunate that I
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had a couple modest successes. I started a company with
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some guys in twenty ten and we sold it in
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twenty fourteen, and then I did another one in twenty
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seventeen that we sold in twenty twenty one. And I
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have been interested in crypto since the early twenty tens.
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The co founders of my first company were actually big,
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bigcoinners they started. They went on to start a company
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called Unchained Capital, which is multi sig custody for bitcoin,
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and that's what really sent me down the rabbit hole.
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And then another friend of mine here in Boston, which
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is where I live now, started a company called flip
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Side Crypto in twenty seventeen, and that's what really got
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me interested in the all chains. And then I also,
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in between bitcoin and alts, was exposed to ethereum during
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the mint. I was sitting next to a friend when
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he bought ethereum in the in the auction, and you know,
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I'll never forget it because I recall it. The price
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went up every some period of time I don't remember.
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You had to have bitcoin obviously to buy by ethan
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the auction, and I had bitcoin and everything, and the
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price had just doubled when I met up with him
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at his apartment and I was like, ah, you know,
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I missed, I missed the low price. And then this
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was like, you know, I don't know pennies and ethereum token,
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but it's incredible to see how the industry has come
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along from there.
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Yeah, amazing journey. Nick, you know, as a founder and
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you exited those companies and you sold them and so forth,
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and uh, you know, coming across crypto, you know, how
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did you end up at? Why did you pick Solana
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you know as a place to go work? And there's
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a lot of blockchain projects out there. Maybe you can
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tell a little a bit about, you know, for the
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newcomers who are maybe watching and listen to this, what
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is Solona and why is why is it better in
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the others?
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Yeah, so, so Solona is the fastest and cheapest, most
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scalable layer one blockchain and uh with with the best
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ecosystem too. I think that's really really important. It was
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it was really clear to me when I was in
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venture capital that the ecosystem that Solana had, you know,
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been building and it was still very early. This is
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like twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, was really sticky,
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and the people that were building the Salona ecosystem were
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there because you know, they really firmly believed that it
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was the best technology and that they had you know,
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the best approach to scalability. Of course, scalability on Salona
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is at the layer one. There's no fragmentation of liquidity,
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and that is really a key part of the Salona thesis,
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which is all assets, same chain, global market participants twenty
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four to seven. And I think we even saw that,
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you know today, with the launch of Monad tokens on
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the Salona network at the same time as they they
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were live everywhere else. And you know, some people may say, well,
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isn't that's kind of weird. You know, Monad is an
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EVM chain. And the idea, though, is is is that
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Solana has been very consistent, you know, from its inception,
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which is all assets, one chain, you know, single liquidity venue,
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global art participants twenty for seven, all assets, I mean
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all assets, and it was just really clear to me
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that the people building on Solana were there because they
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really believed in technology, really believed in in in what
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totally rushed and the founders had built. And then as
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a user, if you had ever used any blockchain, you know,
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in that twenty twenty one twenty two time frame, and
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then you use Solana, you're just like, this is wicked fast,
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this is incredible. It's incredibly fast, it's incredibly cheap. The
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ux is just so good, and you know, it's funny, like,
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didn't in my opinion, take a genius to see that,
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but Solana has always been the underdolf, even then when
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it was so clear, you know, at least to me,
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that that Solana was building something that was really durable.
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I have friends asking me, you know what, you're going
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to the Salona Foundation, you know, And this again was
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summer of twenty three and FTX it happened six months ago.
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But it's incredible the people that came before me, and
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there were many people that were building on Salona much
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before I joined the foundation, And boy do I give
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them a lot of credit because they really, they really
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got it. And I'm just so glad that they exposed
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me to it, because it's just an incredible it's an
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incredible platform, it's an incredible ecosystem. It's an incredible place
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to build.
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Yeah, for sure. And I remember years ago, Nick, I
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was testing Solana, looking to build like a social token.
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It had no value to it, and it was so
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fast and so easy. So I can certainly attest to that.
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So Nick, you know, you mentioned, you know, it's it's
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a layer one and you have this ecosystem, you got
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retail participants, people are doing NFTs, meme coins, pumped out
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fund and all that, and you have institutions building on it.
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So my question is how is Solana a to handle
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the volume of transactions not just now but future as
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there's more demand and more people come on chain.
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Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And so the
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thing that makes Selana unique there's kind of two main things.
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One is parallel execution and this is what really helps
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with scalability. Currently, the theoretical throughput of the network is
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about sixty five thousand transactions per second. And the there's
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a new upgrade to the CAN. The new independent validator
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client is being built called fired Answer by Jump Crypto,
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and that has a million tps, which is more than
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enough to handle you know, just I mean a million
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can current transactions per second, which is more enough for
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the NASDAC of the blockchain, which was which was the
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founding vision of Solana. And then the second thing that's
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really important is the fees. Is how does Salona keep
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fees down even amidst you know this the scaling nature
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of the utilization of the network, and this is thanks
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to a concept called local fee markets. So on Ethereum
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and other ev chains, they have this idea of global
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fee markets. If there's a spike in demand, all of
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the transaction fees for that network go up. And this
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is what you saw in October during the flash crash,
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where you know, it was hundreds, if not thousands of
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dollars to transact on Ethereum, and then you know, in
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some cases many tens of dollars to transact on Layer twos,
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whereas on Solana the media and fee was still you know,
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in the in the sets and normally Slona is one
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thousandth of a cent per transaction. And that is really
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imperative because it's not just about having low fees, but
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it's having predictably low fees for institutions in particular that
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need to know they need to be able to budget
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for you know, what things are going to cost, to
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know what they should charge for various products that they're
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building on the blockchain.
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Yeah. Absolutely, Now you being head of institutional right grow
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that is I'm curious, what are institutions building on slaoner
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they took organizing money market funds or toognizing other types
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of assets, and you know, what's what's the conversation been
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like over the past year, given the change in the
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regulatory environment and so forth.
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Yeah, so let's start with the change in the regulatory environment.
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I can't say enough how important the passage of the
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Genius Act bill was. Obviously, we have an incredibly blockchain
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forward president in Donald Trump, who's who's done all kinds
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of helpful things in the administrative branch, you know, the
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which he controls. But what I think was particularly exciting
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was that the legislative branch, in kind of a bipartisan action,
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passed the Genius Act, which which made stable coins something
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that everyone has very clear guidelines on which they can
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build on. And that has really led, I think, to
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an influx of institutional interest in the blockchain, and I
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think the Clarity Act will only continue to to accelerate that.
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But what are institutions doing on Solana? Well, you've got
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all sorts of different institutions doing different kinds of things.
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On the payment side, you've got the likes of Visa
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and MasterCard and PayPal and Stripe Square cash App recently
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also announced that they're using Solana PayPal on the tomization side.
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On the asset management, you've got Hamilton Lane Breb and
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Howard Apollo. On the private side, you've got you know,
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black Rock, Van Eck, Franklin Templeton Wellington and others. On
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the money fund side, you've got all sorts of commodities,
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you know, gold, wine, art, even whiskey and everything under
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the sun. You know, as as I mentioned when we
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started the podcast, all assets, same liquidity venue, global market
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that has spends twenty four seven. And so we're really
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working to bring institutions on Solana with all different kinds
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of assets. And then there's also so banks are building
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on Salona as well. You've got Societe General which has
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stable coin, fi Serve recently announced that they're building stable
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coins on Solana. And then you've got money transmitters like
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Western mean, who's who's building on Salona. So the institutional
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utilization of Solona really runs the gamut, and I think
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it's increasingly being seen as a place that institutions feel
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incredibly comfortable building and are are increasingly choosing Salona as
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a first chain or only chain that they're building on.
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Yeah, it's incredible adoption. And you mentioned the most recent
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move was Western Union looking to launch their stable coin
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on Solana, which which is incredible. You know, when these
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institutions are using Solana, and this may be a question
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that goes for every blockchain, you know, how are they
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integrating it or plugging into solon. I'm curious about that
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and maybe technical where you know, it may go over
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the heads of some folks, but I'm curious, what is
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the step of hitting the ground running from a conversation
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to hitting the ground.
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Yeah, so I would say, you know, institutions take a
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few different approaches to how they build on the blockchain.
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It depends in part on you know, the level of
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investment that they're able to make and also kind of
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how technology, how comfortable they are with the new technologies.
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So some some institutions you know, want to recruit and
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and or train you know, current engineers that they have
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and and have them you know, do the build eternally.
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And then others, you know, might look to a partner,
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like a tokenization partner, like on the stable point side
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that could be a Circle or a Paxos or somebody
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like that. Or on the tokenization side for real world
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assets that could be you know, Securitized or Republic or
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alpha Ledge or Sentrifuge or or somebody like that. And
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it really depends on how quickly they want to move,
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you know, do they want to build it in the house.
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Do they want to maintain it in house? But but
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I think that increasingly institutions are saying we have to
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have this capability, we have to be on chain. And
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that's really exciting to see because once these guys move,
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they don't move fast, but once they move, they move
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with size.
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Oh. Absolutely, you mentioned earlier upgrades such as fire Dancer.
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Correct me if I'm wrong. Is that live or is
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that in the works?
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So fire Dancer is live partially on Maine. There's also
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different versions of it that are live and being tested.
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Fire Dancer will be I think fully live hopefully sometime
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next year. I'm sure we'll get an update on that
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next month in Abu Dhabi at our big conference Breakpoint, Tony,
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I hope you're joining us and others listeners. We'd love
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to see you in Abu Dhabi. Lots of alpha will
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be shared at Breakpoint, as it always is.
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That's exciting. We'll talk offline about that. I would love
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to attend. You know, what are you and the team
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you know? As far as your vision board, so to speak,
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for twenty thirty, let's say five years from now, what's
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Salon I may look like. What do the adoption of
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retail applications, but also institutions.
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Yeah, so I think Salona is powering the financial Internet
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in twenty thirty, and you may or may not even
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know that it is doing that. Right as a user,
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we want applications built on Solana to be as fast
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and performant as any other application, and I think you're
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seeing that increasingly, where you know, people will use a
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dex or they'll use you know, per peer, you know,
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payments app and they're just amazed that it's even you know,
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blockchain underneath, because it just feels so fast, almost instantaneous.
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And currently settlement for a transaction on Solon it's about
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four hundred milliseconds, but there's a new technology and other
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new technology being built called out and Glow, which will
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reduce that to about one hundred fifty milliseconds. And the
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reason that is so important is two hundred milliseconds is
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the point at which a human feels something is generally instantaneous.
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So we're going from something that's already really really fast
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to something that to the human eye will appear as
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nearly instantaneous. And you know, that's that's really exciting. And
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I think twenty thirty, you know, virtually every financial application
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on the Internet will be powered on Solana.
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So on that note, Nick, the transition for many companies
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from Web two to Web three, it's in the progress,
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right and there's still people who are skeptics. They're still
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on the fence. So I'm curious what your strategy is
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to approach some of these companies, you know, like the
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Googles and the facebooks and and other you know, companies
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that are running primarily Web two. And to your point,
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you know, eventually people won't know Solona is powering the
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back end, just that it works right at the end
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of the day, the average Joe and Jane. So I'm curious,
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how are you. I don't know if you can reveal this,
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but what's your pitch to these folks, Like, Hey, you
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need to get on here. This is this is what's happening.
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Not necessarily you have to advertise it to the end consumer,
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but you have to build it into your background.
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Yeah, well, I think it's it's really simple. If you
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are a large institution, you wanted to be early in
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the cloud, you wanted to be early in mobile, you
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wanted to be early in social and now I think
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you want to be early in blockchain, and I think
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it is still early. You know, if you look at
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who accrued, you know, market share, Aws, Cloud, you know Facebook,
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you know social and then mobile, Apple and Google. Right,
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and you want to be early in blockchain? I think
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you know the visas, the paypals, the squares, you know,
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the Western unions, the black Rocks, the Franklin Timpletons. These
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folks that are building on the blockchain. Now you'll see
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them really I think benefit from that in terms of,
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you know, their their market performance over the coming years.
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And then certainly payments has been something that's really been
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at the forefront of innovation when it comes to blockchain
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and so forth. Right, But what about tracking certain things
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on the blockchain or putting certain data and information? How
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where do you see that at? This is a hard
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question to answer because it's very open end. You know,
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different industries operated in different ways. But what do you
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see folks looking at beyond payments to do other things
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like I don't know, supply chain management and things like that. Yeah, listen,
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I think I think blockchain has all sorts of really
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interesting use cases and I think you know, we've seen
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innovation and experimentation, you know, in lots of different utility
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of the blockchain. I think where it's got unequivocally clear
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product market fit is for financial rails. Right.
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We've seen this with stable coins. There's now three hundred
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plus billion dollars of stable coins on chain. We've seen
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this with art of u A. There's now thirty billion
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plus in art of vua on chain. And these these
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numbers are growing extraordinarily. I'm sure we'll get to a
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trillion dollars some stable points next year and one hundred
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billion dollars of our w A. And I think that's
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where there's unequivocally clear a product our g iFIT and
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why you're seeing you know, financial institutions in particular, you know,
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coming coming to the blockchain very very quickly.
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Now institutions they very much care about security and privacy,
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right and not having certain data out there to the
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open and in a while. So how does Solana meet
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that need?
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Yeah, Well, so there's kind of two ways. One there's
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the protocol itself and then there's third party applications built
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on top of the protocol. Okay, so the protocol itself, Uh,
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there's there's a token program that was released last year
355
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called Token extensions and token extensions has UH the ability
356
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to add various configuration settings to to tokens that are
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issued on in the Salon of blockchain. One of those
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is this idea of confidential balances, and PayPal actually uses
359
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this token extension for their p y u s D
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stable coin. So if I send you uh y u
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s d stable coin tony, other people won't be able
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to see how much I sent you. They'll see that
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I sent you as the stable coin, but they won't
364
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be able or they they'll see that wallet A sent
365
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wallet b p y u s D, but they won't
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be able to see the amount that was transferred. And
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there's all sorts of ways also to you know, make
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wallets difficult to identify as to who is the owner.
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So for example, like if you send something from Coinbase
370
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to your phantom wallet, and then something from your phantom
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00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:45.839
wallet back to Coinbase, and and then you send that
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from Coinbase somewhere else, UH, you won't be able to
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really be able to track you know, who who all
374
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that was sent to if you're looking at the public ledger.
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So long story short is you can use kind of
376
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the existing capabilities of the Salon protocol you know, to
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do a lot of what you're talking about with respect
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to confidentiality and privacy. But then there's also third party
379
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providers like RCM and Umbra that are adding additional confidentiality
380
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and privacy at the application layer, and and so I
381
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think you'll see both. But you know, Salona is a public,
382
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permissionless blockchain, and so by nature, you know, all data is.
383
00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:37.720
Accessible via block explorer. Oh for sure, look to your point,
384
00:21:37.720 --> 00:21:39.599
you can see a transaction happen, but you may not
385
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know the details, right right, Yeah, talk to us a
386
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bit about bridging to let's say, private chains, because we
387
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see some of these institutions they have their wall garden
388
00:21:49.839 --> 00:21:53.440
permission private blockchains, but they want to communicate with public blockchains.
389
00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:56.160
What are you seeing on that front? And is it
390
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easy for them to plug into salonim.
391
00:21:58.920 --> 00:22:02.640
Yeah, So, I mean there's an number of bridges that
392
00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:06.759
connect to private blockchains and public blockchains. I think among
393
00:22:06.839 --> 00:22:12.160
them are you know, chain link, wormhole, I believe, uh,
394
00:22:12.359 --> 00:22:16.839
layer zero as well. So for example, if you're looking
395
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.880
to connect you know, JP Morgan connects us to Solana
396
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:22.880
or to another public blockchain like base, you can use
397
00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:26.160
something like chain link to do that. Of course, the
398
00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:30.839
private blockchain needs to allow the data to be passed,
399
00:22:31.559 --> 00:22:36.119
you know, because that's the whole idea they control, you know,
400
00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:40.319
their their networks. But I think you are going to
401
00:22:40.359 --> 00:22:46.039
see an increasing move towards interoperability. What what I'm hearing
402
00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:49.400
is institutions, you know, ultimately want to settle on public
403
00:22:49.400 --> 00:22:54.039
blockchains and that's where the liquidity is. And so I
404
00:22:54.039 --> 00:22:55.599
think I think that's, you know, one of the many
405
00:22:55.599 --> 00:22:59.160
reasons you're going to see more institutions come to Solana Nick.
406
00:22:59.279 --> 00:23:00.880
I don't know if you sure these thoughts, but it's
407
00:23:00.880 --> 00:23:03.279
amazing to see at in for the ward is capitulation.
408
00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:06.039
But many of these institutions, they tried to bypass the
409
00:23:06.079 --> 00:23:08.839
public blockchains for years, build their own version, you know.
410
00:23:08.920 --> 00:23:12.000
JP Morgan did a private version of etherorem Quorum or
411
00:23:12.039 --> 00:23:14.480
whatever they call it. But now they realize, to your point,
412
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the liquidities on the public blockchains and they want to
413
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settle it there.
414
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Well. So, I in fairness to the institutions that were
415
00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:27.000
building on private blockchains, I think it was as much
416
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because of the lack of regulatory clarity. You know, until
417
00:23:32.160 --> 00:23:36.319
January twentieth of this year, crypto was a four letter
418
00:23:36.359 --> 00:23:39.640
word in the United States, and you know, that has
419
00:23:39.759 --> 00:23:44.119
been just an absolute sea change in you know, where
420
00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:47.599
what institutions can do. You know, in the United States
421
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they could do things you know, in other markets, in
422
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Switzerland and Singapore and and and and in some other
423
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markets as well where there where there were more friendly regulators,
424
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but in the US they really couldn't. And and many
425
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of the institutions that are global, of course are also
426
00:24:04.119 --> 00:24:06.359
UH in many cases have a US presence, and they
427
00:24:06.359 --> 00:24:09.839
didn't want to, you know, create any issues with the
428
00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:15.039
SEC or OCC or whoever their regulators were. But now
429
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:19.559
that that they you know, have a green light, you know,
430
00:24:19.680 --> 00:24:22.839
the cars are absolutely racing around the track to build
431
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on public blockchains.
432
00:24:24.519 --> 00:24:27.519
Yeah, it's amazing to see how things have changed on
433
00:24:27.559 --> 00:24:29.960
that front. Now there's been a lot of demand for
434
00:24:30.079 --> 00:24:33.480
Solona as an asset for ETPs as well as digital
435
00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:36.720
asset treasury companies. Tell us a bit about those products
436
00:24:36.759 --> 00:24:38.799
that are being going live and how you've been interacting
437
00:24:38.799 --> 00:24:39.440
with those folks.
438
00:24:39.799 --> 00:24:43.000
Yeah, so that's another really exciting development that again, you know,
439
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:45.640
I think was really made possible this year thanks to
440
00:24:45.880 --> 00:24:52.279
friendlier regulation, UH specifically the SEC in in in that instance.
441
00:24:53.279 --> 00:24:55.039
So the way that I look at it is the
442
00:24:55.079 --> 00:24:59.559
ETFs or ways for people to access the soul token
443
00:24:59.640 --> 00:25:02.799
pass and dat's are a way for people to access
444
00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:05.119
UH this oul token, you know, in more of an
445
00:25:05.160 --> 00:25:10.000
actively managed vehicle, and so on the ETF side, UH
446
00:25:10.920 --> 00:25:13.799
a couple of weeks ago the first ones came out
447
00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:17.200
for Solana. Bit Wise and Grayscale were the first two
448
00:25:17.279 --> 00:25:22.200
to launch with staking, and then a number followed van K,
449
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:26.200
Canary and Fidelity UH just this past week, and there's
450
00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:28.680
a few others that are filed I believe Franklin, Templeton
451
00:25:28.799 --> 00:25:32.000
and Vesco maybe some others. And then on the DAT side,
452
00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:37.799
Forward Industries raised one point sixty five billion dollars to
453
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:41.000
deploy into Solana and then into DeFi Strategies, and there's
454
00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:45.880
a number of other dats as well. The Salona Company
455
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:51.759
sold me Upex, DeFi dev sold Strategies and and others,
456
00:25:51.799 --> 00:25:53.839
and you know, I think it's great that there's all
457
00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:57.359
these teams now that are in large institutions like Fidelity
458
00:25:57.359 --> 00:26:00.240
and and and and n K and and b guys
459
00:26:00.279 --> 00:26:03.480
that are out there really educating the market about h Solana,
460
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and I think that will only bring more and more
461
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people into the Salona ecosystem. You know, if they invest
462
00:26:09.839 --> 00:26:12.720
in Solana and they haven't used the blockchain, maybe that'll
463
00:26:12.799 --> 00:26:14.960
drive them to you know, download a fine and wallet,
464
00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:17.759
try it out and really see how incredible it is,
465
00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:19.279
you know, to use Solana.
466
00:26:20.079 --> 00:26:23.160
Yeah, that's a great point. Those are great on ramps. Great,
467
00:26:23.319 --> 00:26:25.759
uh you know, way for folks that dip their their
468
00:26:25.839 --> 00:26:28.279
toes in the water, right and before they plunge in.
469
00:26:28.359 --> 00:26:31.680
And I've heard, you know, from a few folks anecdotally
470
00:26:31.720 --> 00:26:33.680
that you know, who have bought let's say ETFs and
471
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:35.000
they're like, yeah, I want to go see if I
472
00:26:35.039 --> 00:26:37.440
can set up a wallet and do some cool things
473
00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:40.480
defy you know, any any type of Web three activity
474
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:41.119
and things like that.
475
00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.960
Absolutely well, by the way, if you want to mention
476
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that since the first Salona ETFs went live a few
477
00:26:48.680 --> 00:26:51.880
weeks ago, they have seen inflows every single trade and
478
00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:55.839
day since. So while Bitcoin and ethereum have had outflows
479
00:26:55.880 --> 00:26:58.680
to the tunes of billions of dollars, Solana has seen
480
00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:01.400
nothing but inflows that I think it really shows the
481
00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:06.440
demand and interest in Solana, which is really exciting to see.
482
00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:09.079
Oh. Absolutely, yeah. I've been tracking some of the et
483
00:27:09.359 --> 00:27:11.720
inflows and you know, my friends a bit wise looking
484
00:27:11.759 --> 00:27:15.640
at b Soul and all that. So, yeah, it's really exciting.
485
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:17.920
What's on your role map that you can share. I
486
00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:19.400
know some things might be on the wrap, but I'm
487
00:27:19.400 --> 00:27:21.400
curious what you got, you know, maybe twenty twenty six
488
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:22.079
and things like that.
489
00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:24.240
Yeah, So one of the things that I say all
490
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:27.799
the time is it's it's you know, Solana has been
491
00:27:27.839 --> 00:27:32.039
true to the same North Star vision since inception, which is,
492
00:27:32.279 --> 00:27:36.799
you know, all assets trading twenty four to seven globally
493
00:27:37.240 --> 00:27:42.319
anybody can can trade in a single liquidity venue. And
494
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:44.720
and so we're just going to keep doing it. We're
495
00:27:44.759 --> 00:27:47.319
just gonna keep doing it. You're gonna see more assets,
496
00:27:47.319 --> 00:27:49.240
You've got to see more applications, You're going to see
497
00:27:49.240 --> 00:27:53.319
more tokens, and and we're going to continue to attract
498
00:27:53.400 --> 00:27:56.319
you know, the best founders and builders and institutions in
499
00:27:56.359 --> 00:27:59.599
the world to build on Solana such that you know,
500
00:27:59.640 --> 00:28:02.000
in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, and twenty thirty
501
00:28:02.039 --> 00:28:05.359
and beyond, you know, there'll be more assets, more liquidity,
502
00:28:05.960 --> 00:28:11.440
more counter parties for you to build with together in
503
00:28:11.480 --> 00:28:13.319
the salon of ecosystem.
504
00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:16.079
So Nick, you know, it's amazing to see the adoption
505
00:28:16.160 --> 00:28:18.960
of Solana and all the things that are happening. And
506
00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:23.680
you know, in regards to the market structure building, I
507
00:28:23.680 --> 00:28:26.319
think you alluded to it earlier. Do you foresee that
508
00:28:26.400 --> 00:28:29.000
once that is passed into law there may be an
509
00:28:29.039 --> 00:28:31.799
explosion of innovation and building on slana that some people
510
00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:34.599
might still be on the sidelines waiting for that clarity.
511
00:28:34.759 --> 00:28:39.799
Yeah, I think so. I think every piece of legislation
512
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:43.400
that that moves crypto in the blockchain, you know, kind
513
00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:49.480
of further into acceptance, into general acceptance is better. But
514
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:51.559
I think we also have a lot to work with
515
00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:55.799
even if Clarity Act isn't passed. So I think that,
516
00:28:56.160 --> 00:29:00.160
you know, the big puzzle pieces are in place, you know,
517
00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:03.720
thanks to the Trump administration for institutions to build on
518
00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:08.519
the blockchain. Just this past week, those who see shed
519
00:29:08.599 --> 00:29:13.359
light on how babies can hold you know, small amounts
520
00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:16.960
of tokens to you know, make transactions on the blockchain,
521
00:29:18.079 --> 00:29:20.359
And I think that's great. And so I think you're
522
00:29:20.359 --> 00:29:24.640
gonna continue to see you know, administrative action to help
523
00:29:24.720 --> 00:29:28.680
clarify what institutions and others can do on the blockchain,
524
00:29:28.759 --> 00:29:31.720
even the absence of the Clarity Act. Legislation. But I do,
525
00:29:31.799 --> 00:29:34.559
of course hope we see the clarity acts. As you know,
526
00:29:34.599 --> 00:29:38.720
more legislation provides even clearer guidelines and rules and a
527
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:41.599
level playing field for everyone to build on. And anything
528
00:29:41.599 --> 00:29:44.759
that happens here domestically in the United States drives innovation
529
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:48.920
everywhere else in the world forward. So, you know, really
530
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:52.480
exciting to see that the US is now leading innovation
531
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:55.960
on blockchain versus you know, making it difficult for builders
532
00:29:56.720 --> 00:29:59.880
to to grow their companies on the blockchain.
533
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:03.960
Now we're seeing blockchain is starting to penetrate different industries
534
00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:07.759
and aspects of life. And I'm curious, what do you
535
00:30:07.759 --> 00:30:10.359
guys see down the line. And this is a hard
536
00:30:10.400 --> 00:30:13.480
question to answer, right, you know, is it the gaming world,
537
00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:16.559
is it social media? I don't know what that may be.
538
00:30:16.640 --> 00:30:19.200
But what do you think might be the next driver
539
00:30:19.319 --> 00:30:20.440
of adoption and building?
540
00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:24.359
I mean barely scratching the surface in terms of like
541
00:30:24.440 --> 00:30:29.440
the the use case for you know, the Internet, capital markets,
542
00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:33.799
for you know, financial assets on chain today, and so
543
00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:38.440
I think it's you know, really widening, widening the wedge
544
00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:42.880
that we have there. You know, there's just so much
545
00:30:42.920 --> 00:30:45.039
more to go. Like I said, there's only thirty billion
546
00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:48.920
of RWA on chain. There's something like three plus trillion
547
00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:52.359
dollars of investable assets maybe more on Earth. So you're
548
00:30:52.400 --> 00:30:58.559
talking about one percent penetration at most today, and so
549
00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:01.160
I think, you know, we're going to see a lot
550
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:04.240
more of that as well as other use cases too.
551
00:31:04.960 --> 00:31:07.279
But I think that where there's clear product market fit,
552
00:31:07.319 --> 00:31:09.640
you'll see more and more people come in and build
553
00:31:09.640 --> 00:31:12.440
that out further such that, you know, over the next
554
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:14.400
few years, I really think you'll be able to do
555
00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:18.440
pretty much any financial transaction of any kind on Solana.
556
00:31:18.559 --> 00:31:20.559
You could pretty much do that already, but I think
557
00:31:20.599 --> 00:31:24.119
you'll you'll really be able to do that increasingly over
558
00:31:24.160 --> 00:31:25.119
the next few years.
559
00:31:25.559 --> 00:31:28.920
Oh absolutely, Nick, I gotta ask you about the market, man,
560
00:31:29.039 --> 00:31:34.079
it's been brutal. We've been in a pretty big correction
561
00:31:34.519 --> 00:31:36.920
and everybody is getting a little bit dismade. What is
562
00:31:36.920 --> 00:31:39.680
your personal outlook is have we topped out? I know,
563
00:31:40.039 --> 00:31:42.039
you know you're a builder, so long term this is
564
00:31:42.079 --> 00:31:45.160
this is a blimp right on the on the screen here,
565
00:31:45.519 --> 00:31:48.359
But you know, what would you say, are we topped
566
00:31:48.359 --> 00:31:50.319
out or there's more to go? In twenty twenty six?
567
00:31:50.759 --> 00:31:55.000
You know, I'm a permeable Tony I'm always bullish. I
568
00:31:55.039 --> 00:32:00.880
think I think we're so early, it's just crazy. So
569
00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:03.200
you know, I I try not to pay attention to
570
00:32:03.319 --> 00:32:06.759
short term movements in in in the market, and and
571
00:32:06.920 --> 00:32:10.799
just look at, you know, where we are today versus
572
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:13.039
where we were a few years ago, versus where I
573
00:32:13.079 --> 00:32:15.640
think we'll be, you know, in in the next few years.
574
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:17.759
And I think we're gonna be higher.
575
00:32:18.559 --> 00:32:21.960
Yeah, it seems like, you know, crypto is certainly following
576
00:32:21.960 --> 00:32:24.440
the liquidity cycle as kind of like all you know,
577
00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:27.119
assets on the macro and I guess we just got
578
00:32:27.160 --> 00:32:29.039
to be patient. But the building continues that there's a
579
00:32:29.079 --> 00:32:33.079
lot of great stuff on the horizon. You know, there
580
00:32:33.160 --> 00:32:34.759
was a question I wanted to ask in it is
581
00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:37.920
escaping me? Okay, here we go. I'm curious if anyone
582
00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:42.599
is building let's say that digital identity uh on Solana
583
00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:44.319
that you can share. I know, some things may be
584
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:44.920
on the tops.
585
00:32:45.880 --> 00:32:48.920
So there there there is an initiative called the Solana
586
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:53.960
Attestation Service, which makes it really easy for folks to
587
00:32:54.119 --> 00:32:58.240
connect identity, you know, to their projects on Solana. And
588
00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:01.400
I believe if you googles on at testation service, there's
589
00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:03.720
a landing page on Salona dot com where you can
590
00:33:03.759 --> 00:33:04.480
learn more about that.
591
00:33:05.599 --> 00:33:07.400
Okay, got it? Yeah, because you know, one of the
592
00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:10.839
things one of the pain points I experienced, and I
593
00:33:10.839 --> 00:33:13.559
think a lot of people, it's impersonations online and not
594
00:33:13.720 --> 00:33:18.079
being able to have blockchain verified social profiles. And you've
595
00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:20.319
got scammers they create one hundred versions of you and
596
00:33:20.440 --> 00:33:23.240
messaging people trying to scam people. But also, if I
597
00:33:23.279 --> 00:33:25.839
can have my digital identity all in one app, and
598
00:33:26.319 --> 00:33:28.680
you know, it's interoppable everywhere, that would make my life
599
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:30.519
a lot easier and I'm sure many people as well.
600
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:32.559
Yeah, I think we'll get going in that direction.
601
00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:35.119
All right. Well, as things progress there, I'm going to
602
00:33:35.160 --> 00:33:36.839
have to have you back on to talk about it.
603
00:33:37.759 --> 00:33:40.160
We should have one of my engineering colleagues who can
604
00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:41.799
share all the ins and outs of it.
605
00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:45.319
Perfect. Perfect, So Nick, got some wrap up questions here
606
00:33:45.359 --> 00:33:47.480
for you. First, if you could create your own metaverse,
607
00:33:47.480 --> 00:33:50.400
will the theme be so I'm a big tennis player
608
00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:54.000
and I this was actually pretty cool back in the
609
00:33:54.400 --> 00:33:57.960
you know, when NFTs were really popping. The Australian Open,
610
00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:00.880
which is the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the
611
00:34:00.920 --> 00:34:02.359
calendar year. It's in January.
612
00:34:03.519 --> 00:34:06.920
You could buy an NFT for the Australian Open, which
613
00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:09.800
was a square of the tennis court and if the
614
00:34:09.880 --> 00:34:13.199
last point of the match fell on your square, they
615
00:34:13.239 --> 00:34:17.320
would send you the ball. But they had a watching
616
00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:20.840
party for the Australian Open for NFT holders in the metaphorse.
617
00:34:21.280 --> 00:34:23.920
And I can't remember which metaverse project it was, if
618
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:26.920
it was a sandbox or another one, but I did it,
619
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:29.840
you know, and it was kind of cool. So yeah,
620
00:34:30.159 --> 00:34:34.079
tennis and the metaverse. Nice rapid fire questions, favorite food,
621
00:34:34.760 --> 00:34:41.599
favorite food avocado, favorite musician or band Pearl Jam, favorite
622
00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:48.119
movie clue, favorite book Snow Leopard by Peter Matheson.
623
00:34:48.559 --> 00:34:50.519
And when you're not working at the Salona Foundation, what
624
00:34:50.559 --> 00:34:51.280
are you doing for fun?
625
00:34:51.639 --> 00:34:53.679
I'm playing tennis or with my kids.
626
00:34:53.960 --> 00:34:57.960
Nice Nick, great stuff, pleasure chatting with you. I'm looking
627
00:34:58.000 --> 00:34:59.960
forward to the future. Up bates, Aron Salana, thank you
628
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:02.159
so much for joining me. Thanks so much for having me.