Compilation: Jaleel Plus Six

In September, Pump.fun staged a return of the gods.

After a long period of chaos in the Solana launchpad arena, with various controversies surrounding Pump.fun and waves of skepticism, everything changed in September—Pump.fun and its founder Alon declared in an almost violent aesthetic way: "We are back, and stronger than ever."

For two consecutive days, Pump.fun's daily revenue surpassed Hyperliquid, ranking third among all DeFi protocols, only behind the money printers Tether and Circle. This all stemmed from the core upgrade "Project Ascend," which was friendly to live stream creators, launched on September 2. Some users reported that the earnings from a single Pump.fun live stream were equivalent to a month's income on YouTube, which made creators particularly enthusiastic about the live streaming feature.

On just September 15 alone, the platform distributed over $4 million in real cash to creators. Within a week, total earnings for creators reached $19.3 million. How terrifying is this "revenue flywheel effect"? On that day, 21,000 new live stream tokens were issued. According to GMGN's real-time data, the number of tokens in the Pump.fun live stream "graduation" section with a market cap exceeding $1 million has reached 39. And that's not all. While Pump.fun was frantically distributing money to creators, it was also executing an aggressive token buyback strategy—since mid-July, it has spent $97.3 million to buy back PUMP tokens, directly removing 6.67% of the circulating supply.

Just as Pump.fun reignited the entire live streaming arena, Alon's latest interview appeared last night on Solana Alive, hosted by Mert from Helius, with two other guests, Axiom founder Henry Zhang and Multicoin partner Kyle Samani. Rhythm BlockBeats compiled the text version of this episode of Solana Alive:

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

Alon's First Interview After PumpFun's Crazy Live Streaming Boom

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

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

Alon: It's been completely crazy. I mean, you know, we mentioned it publicly on X as well, the past four or five days since the live streaming suddenly took off have been absolutely wild. But it makes me more optimistic because, you know, the vision we've been painting for years is slowly but surely coming to fruition.

Host: I actually want to talk directly about that vision and know how you describe the future of Pumpfun to yourselves. But before that, can you help everyone understand what has happened in the past few days? You have recently made quite a stir in the outside world due to live streaming and creator rewards. Can you summarize for those who are not very familiar with it, what exactly has happened in the past few days?

Alon: Of course. About two weeks ago, PumpFun made a very important change to the protocol, allowing creators to earn more rewards than ever before. The so-called creator rewards essentially tie the interests of creators, their fans, and their token traders together. For example, every time a transaction occurs—whether buying or selling—a small portion is taken and given to the creators. We call this update Project Ascend.

In this update, the fees for creators have basically increased tenfold. Gradually, people realized that this could actually become a very good income channel for them as creators. Plus, we relaunched a live streaming platform back in May, and people have been using it more and more recently. Then, four or five days ago, it completely exploded.

To give you a comparative perspective, for instance, the number of live streaming channels online at the same time. PumpFun has now reached about 20% of Kick, which is the second-largest live streaming platform in the world. A few days ago, I tweeted that we were only about 10% of Kick, but now we are already at 20%. So this growth is simply exponential, and there seems to be no signs of slowing down.

Host: That's insane, wow, everything is happening so fast. So what is driving this? Was there a particular moment of explosion, or did a bunch of creators join in and realize they could actually make a decent living from this and find interesting content? What is really driving all of this?

Alon: There have indeed been some creators who created explosive moments, honestly, there are too many to list. But I think the real trigger point is that everyone realized that "tokenization" is a very, very powerful tool that allows creators to go from zero to one directly. Because they no longer need to wait for audience numbers, nor do they need to wait for funding or ad revenue to start making money from brands, right?

You know, on other platforms, like Web2 platforms, it usually takes months or even years to start making money. But on PumpFun, you can start making money immediately, with no middlemen and no censorship. The audience itself also has a direct incentive to seek out early creators because the earlier they discover them, the more likely they are to profit. This is the huge difference in platform incentives. It's particularly friendly to small and medium creators.

And this applies not only to streamers but also to the Meme Coin community, artists, and startups—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 live streaming, everyone knows there are giants like Twitch; in short videos, there are Kick, Instagram Reels, and even X videos, all competing 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 truly believe this is something entirely new. It attracts a group of people who might not create at all on other platforms. But there is no doubt that it is also competing with the largest platforms on the internet. And it provides all users with a better platform and better services. That’s why we see PumpFun growing at an unprecedented speed.

Host: Was this always your vision? Or did you slowly discover it while observing user behavior around Meme Coins and how they organized communities around them?

Alon: Of course, PumpFun has had a vision from the very beginning to break through the pure crypto circle and expand the application of tokenization to all areas that can change the world. As we built, we saw more and more user behaviors, and these behaviors led us to decide what to build.

For example, live streaming is a case in point. People had already been trying to do live streaming on their own more than a year ago, even when we hadn't officially built the platform yet. We noticed this behavior early on. So overall, we are observing user behavior every day and paying more attention to traders than anyone else. When we see spontaneous behavior from users and creators, we adapt, which allows us to shape our strategy in the medium term. But in the long run, our vision has always been steadfast: to make tokenization a better alternative and ultimately completely disrupt today's social media giants.

Host: Wow, "disrupting social media giants"—that's a very ambitious and explosive goal, I love it. So let's talk about that now. You mentioned the word "vision" several times. Specifically, what is the vision? For example, when you hold weekly meetings at the 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 fundamentally change the way creators create and interact with their audiences. We believe that everyone is a trader, and everyone can benefit by 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 track.

So audiences can earn money with their skills while supporting their favorite creators. And creators—whether they are startups, Meme Coins, or streamers—can immediately monetize without middlemen and without censorship. This is the direction we are moving towards. We are working hard to build this every day.

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

Alon: Haha, I don't know either.

Host: Someone else said "Alon is a god," and another said "Alon is the new generation Zuckerberg." Those comments are quite interesting. What do you think? Do you want to challenge Meta one day, like Instagram?

Alon: I'm flattered. Of course, I think saying we are already competing with giants like Kick and Twitch is not an absurd statement. A few weeks ago, a few months ago, people said it was impossible, and now it's happening every day. I don't want to overhype it, but I have indeed talked to some big names in Web2, and they are starting to notice us, notice PumpFun, notice our creators, and notice the heat here. I believe we will not only compete but also win.

Host (Mert): As a founder, I have to ask, did you "foresee" all of this before taking the first step? I just watched an interview or podcast with your co-founder, so I followed him, and I found out he actually messaged me back in 2023, basically asking: shit coins? I thought to myself, what is this, I had no idea. But now you guys, I don't know the exact number, but you are probably one of the top three or five "revenue growth" tech companies in history. First of all, that data is really staggering. But did you foresee it? Do you think that opportunity has always been there? What has this journey been like from day one to now?

Alon: That's a good question. I definitely did not—we did not—anticipate it would come this fast. But looking back now, everything makes sense.

From day one, we believed this market would be very large. From day one, we were very optimistic about on-chain trading. Before this, we were focused on the NFT direction, and at that time, we had a very bullish outlook on NFTs. Later, we entered the token track on Solana, and from day one, we were equally optimistic.

So we indeed saw the differences here and in other areas very early on. Especially in the early days, many people thought these were just Meme Coins, just a joke, and could never become something sustainable, let alone more meaningful. But we always knew there was something here. This further fueled our ambition to prove all the skeptics wrong.

Host: Has Solana helped you accelerate your business growth? For example, has it allowed you to focus more on the product? I remember you might have been on another platform before, right?

Alon: That's right. Before we created the PumpFun that everyone knows and loves today, we tried a bunch of different ideas on Ethereum-based chains. By the way, this is all public information; we have always been "building in public," and you can go back and look at my early tweets and so on.

A large part of our success is indeed because we are on Solana. There are a lot of traders here, high activity, many excellent ecosystem projects, and of course, a robust underlying blockchain that can handle these loads, along with a great user experience—these have undoubtedly contributed to the platform's rapid growth.

And it's not just that. When we first started PumpFun, we initially came to Solana because the so-called meme coins on Solana had already started to gain some traction. But now we are staying and planning to continue here because the infrastructure has become very good.

Host: I have to ask, you have made unimaginable amounts of money in a very short time, and you are still very young. How do you ensure this doesn't disrupt your brain's reward circuitry? What still drives you? In a sense, you have already "achieved financial freedom." What force keeps you passionate every day to build what you are building?

Alon: Of course, if we weren't mission-driven, if we weren't driven by that ambition to "essentially change the world and make a huge impact," we definitely wouldn't have come this far. Even very successful startups go through extremely difficult moments during the building process—I haven't seen any that have had a smooth ride.

We have experienced many moments where we were close to "breaking," and there have been many times when we could have just walked away and lived very successful lives. But that's not the path we want to take. We want to keep building and make it unprecedentedly bigger. Yes, I mean, at the end of the day, it's all about truly creating impact, not for money or fame or status, or anything like that.

Host: I have to compliment you. You have faced a lot of criticism—now it's a bit less, right? Because we can say the token price has "turned green"—but you really have faced a lot of hate. I've never seen anyone on Twitter endure so much negativity for such a long time, a full year. Of course, there is also a lot of love, so maybe a more accurate word is "polarization." How do you deal with this? Do you really care? Does it affect you? Or are you so steadfast that it doesn't matter? What is Alon's mindset like?

Alon: That's a great question. I think there are two points.

First, if it weren't for the voices from users, I wouldn't care as much. User feedback is really, really important. So if users are disappointed, it does affect me because the whole team and I want to provide users—especially the traders who made all this possible—with the absolute best.

Second, you need to have faith in what you are doing. I mean, especially… let's talk about live streaming since it 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 within just a few days, I saw them flip from bearish to bullish completely. And we have had that faith from the very beginning. This is just an example that shows that sticking to strong principles, believing in yourself and your ideas will pay off.

So even if you receive a lot of hate, no matter the reason, if you know what you are doing is good, that it will make this ecosystem better and make the world better, then there is no reason to be discouraged by what a bunch of people say on X (Twitter) or elsewhere. Because at the end of the day, people can be very shortsighted, and today's platform algorithms do encourage negativity. So the key is to talk to users, to talk to the truly important people in this industry, to seriously absorb their feedback while remaining loyal to your principles and continuing to maintain your faith.

Host: Very well said, my friend. Okay, I'll ask two final quick questions. Obviously, you are pushing live streaming, and it seems to be progressing well. Give some advice to creators because I want to be a streamer when I grow up, or at least give it a try. What advice do you have for creators who want to start streaming? For example, what niches should they focus on, what tactics should they use, how should they get started?

Alon: That's a very good question. I think from a high-level perspective, it ultimately comes 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 small and in the early stages, you actually have a lot of "shots on goal." 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 talking to our team to better understand how the whole thing works. Because "launching a token" is definitely a very different thing. You know, live streaming on PumpFun is very different from other places, and of course, it has its advantages, but you need to respect that, you need to respect the traders on our platform, and you need to take some necessary precautions.

Host: Right, so to make this more specific, can you give some examples?

Alon: For example, when you launch a token, make sure to be very honest with people about your intentions and keep your plans transparent. If you have resources and are ready, like having a streaming schedule, then transparently share that with everyone; if you don't, honestly, you should also be transparent and not overhype or overpromise.

Those things may seem trivial, especially if you come from another field like Web2, where these are actually encouraged. But in crypto, things work very differently, and it can ultimately cause harm. So we take this very, very seriously. One big thing we've been doing in the past few days is proactively reaching out to creators, guiding them to ensure they are advancing in the right way, trying to maximize the chances of success for all creators—not just streamers, but if it's a Meme Coin, an ICM project, or anyone else.

Host: Awesome. Okay, last question. What is the name of your chat group?—Haha, just kidding, don't answer that. Let me change to a more positive one: for those who see what you have accomplished and want to follow the same 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 shipping fast and breaking things. That's not one piece of advice; it's two, right? (laughs) Always act with the highest degree of integrity while iterating quickly, daring to experiment, and trying everything possible. At some point, something will "stick" (be accepted by the market). That's how we are: we have tried a bunch of ideas that no one really cared about. Until one day, we came to Solana, and then it became very successful.

Host: That's fantastic. Thank you very much for your time and for what you are doing. I am also very much looking forward to what you will build next. My friend. Awesome, thank you very much, Alon, and thanks to everyone who attended today.

Fewer than 10 people, Axiom Sets Record for Fastest Revenue Growth

Host (Mert): Very cool, I hope the content just now was useful and rewarding for everyone. I really liked the quant energy from my previous guest (laughs). I think I will invite Henry up soon. Oh, well, the main character is already here. Henry, brother, how are you?

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

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

Henry: No, this is my first time.

Host: Oh, wow, I’m honored, and the Solana Channel is honored that you chose us for your first public appearance. You are the founder and CEO of Axiom. Axiom is the fastest-growing company in terms of revenue in Y Combinator's (YC) history. YC is the accelerator that has incubated a series of companies like Stripe, Coinbase, Airbnb, and more.

So, please introduce yourself to everyone. In fact, not many people really know the founder of Axiom; at least on a personal level, no one knows Henry. What has brought you to this point? What experiences have led you here?

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

After doing a few personal projects, we interned at big companies for a while, and then we started Axiom. Initially, I was trading coins following Ansem, and I thought maybe we could create something better than Photon. And that's how it all started.

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

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

Host: What was the execution process like? Because I guess you know, many people see a really bad website and say, "Damn, I can do better." But the part between the idea and actually making it happen is often the craziest part. So how did you go from that idea to applying to YC and launching your first product? What was that process like?

Henry: We worked extremely hard, really, 16 hours a day for several months straight. In fact, many people don't know that we had released a V1 at that time. But it didn't perform well; there were a lot of issues, in short, the product wasn't good enough. Then we applied to YC, and thanks to Tom from YC, who is our partner, he saw our vision.

I think our ambition and vision have grown larger during the building process. Of course, we are still mainly focused on meme coins, but in the future, we want to become a product with broader scope. The experience at YC was very good and gave me a lot of understanding about entrepreneurship. For us, this experience is completely different from typical AI companies because there were only five crypto-related companies in that batch, and we were the only consumer-facing crypto application.

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

Host: Interesting, wow. I want to talk about vision and the future, but before that, I saw a job posting from Axiom, and it seemed one of the requirements was to live in some apartment with you? Was it in Texas or somewhere in the U.S.? I mean, do people really have 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 can weaken that feeling. So our job postings are very straightforward, but we also offer high compensation that matches the required work intensity.

Host: Well, I'm not a professional trader; I occasionally take long positions in SOL, but overall, I don't trade much. I'm curious because there are all kinds of trading terminals, trading applications, and Telegram bots on the market. You are newcomers, but you quickly outpaced many competitors and did it very low-key until everyone could no longer ignore you. How do you think you achieved this? In a crowded market, how did you stand out? What problems did you solve that others overlooked but traders are very grateful for?

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

While many accelerators or incubators say you need one, I think what's more important, especially in trading or many fields, is "execution." We are super focused on execution. Another often overlooked aspect is "taste." For example, in the beginning, many people couldn't adapt to our UI and complained a lot. But over time, people now see that our design decisions have become the standard, and there's a reason for that.

Host: That's very interesting. We'll have Kyle come up later to talk about this topic, which is actually similar to what the American automotive tycoon Ford said: "If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." And you are essentially saying: we want to launch a whole new user experience, even if it takes some time for everyone to adapt at first. That's really cool. So now, how would you describe Axiom? For someone who doesn't understand crypto, how would you introduce it? Would you say, "We let you trade any asset on Solana, and in the future, possibly cross-chain," or how would you say it?

Henry: What you just said is how we would describe it now. And because of the job postings and a very, very strong recruiting agency, we now have more engineers and can expand into other areas. You will soon see us in other fields as well.

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

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

Host: Okay, then I'll ask a personal question that I'm curious about, which the audience might find less relevant. If you have questions, you can send them in the chat, and we'll select some to ask. You just mentioned that in your YC batch, you were the only consumer crypto application. Most of the others were AI, right? And about a year and a half ago, Jason tweeted that famous line: "If you're doing crypto, pivot to AI." In Silicon Valley, doing crypto seems harder to justify than doing AI, from my experience, perhaps because my risk appetite 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 it's a classic answer: crypto and DeFi offer opportunities that far exceed the existing financial system. The reason we are on Solana is that it has the ecosystem we want. Moreover, we collaborate with very advanced teams like Helius and 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's inspiring. Okay, I want to ask some entrepreneurship-related questions, but before that, I still want to ask something personal. You guys are making money so fast, possibly faster than Pumpfun and Hyperliquid. When you were in that Texas apartment, with a few engineers working hard every day, did you really anticipate today's success? Or were you surprised yourselves?

Henry: Well, I don't think any founder would say, "We are definitely going to be the fastest-growing company." Some might say that, but actually achieving it is a completely different matter. To be honest, we sometimes doubted ourselves. But as the product launched and user feedback was very enthusiastic, we realized that this thing could really be big. Since then, we have adhered to a principle: whenever something new comes out, we want to be the first to provide traders with an advantage so they can trade in this new category. Looking back now, it's not surprising, but at the time, it was indeed surprising.

Host: I also asked Alon and Toly: you made so much money so quickly, and historically, many people who made quick money started to act out, even collapsing the industry. Clearly, you are not doing those things, like over-issuing stablecoins. But the question is, when you wake up every morning, what drives you? 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 completely stop expanding, but obviously, he hasn't. The reason is simple: whoever can execute best and master the distribution channels can seize this huge opportunity. For me, another point is "to be the first company to define this experience," which is very important to me.

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

Henry: Fewer than 10, plus the new hires, we're almost at 10.

Host: Fewer than 10 people have achieved this level; that's crazy. How do you recruit? You can't just post a job ad and call it a day, right?

Henry: Our consistent style is extremely "resourceful" and manual. When we had little funding, I would go to Discord and Reddit to find independent developers myself. Now we do cold outreach on LinkedIn, focusing on Solana developers and paying attention to their open-source contributions. Additionally, we maintain a large recruitment funnel. We also connected with a very strong recruiting agency, and now most of our new hires come from there.

Host: It sounds like you are the kind of person who remembers everything that bothers you until you personally resolve it. What do you think is the most common mistake founders make in the crypto space?

Henry: I think it's being overly focused on "marketing." Many people, especially after fundraising, want to buy an insurance net, so they spend money on influencers and agents. But if the product is bad, that’s basically useless. I've seen too many of those. My point is: a good product will market itself. Users will genuinely enjoy using it, and then they will want to tell their friends, "Wow, you haven't used this? I have to recommend it to you." That's the attitude founders should have.

Host: Well said. This is especially important in consumer-facing fields, where people will spread the word spontaneously. Okay, last question. There are many loyal users of yours watching the live stream; what can they expect in the coming months?

Henry: We will enhance performance globally to achieve absolute best. We have heard the voices of users and are working hard to improve. Additionally, we will follow emerging trends more quickly, like the recent Pump CCM. Also, another branch of our team is working on some other asset categories, and you will see some cool collaborations in the future that will bring users a brand new trading experience.

Host: That's so cool. Henry, thank you very much for choosing to make your first public appearance here. You guys are doing great; keep it up.

Henry: Thank you, Mert. I'm glad to chat with you all.

Multicoin's $1.65 Billion SOL DAT Bet

Host (Mert): Guys, these guests are all younger than me but much more successful, which is not good for my self-esteem (laughs). Is Kyle ready? Kyle, long time no see, my friend. How have you been? How's it going, brother? How does it feel—watching these young founders make more money than you?

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

Host: Now we have Mr. Kyle Samani with us. Give the audience some background: I just had Kyle on my podcast on Sunday (two days ago), so I've actually already asked you many of the questions I'm about to ask. I'll try to ask some new ones. But obviously, Kyle, you are now the chairman of the new Treasury company DAT (a treasury-type company), with the code FORD. Let's fill in the information: what is it? What does it do? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?

Kyle: Hello everyone, I'm Kyle from Multicoin. I'm currently in Washington, DC, and will be meeting with people in Congress over the next few days. I recently became the 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 just like that car company.

Over the past few months, I have gradually become familiar with the management of Ford Industries. They recognized an opportunity: to collaborate with Jump, Galaxy, and us at Multicoin to create a leading treasury strategy for Solana and digital assets. So we came together and raised $1.65 billion in just a few weeks. We announced this deal last week, and the settlement was completed last week as well. The funds have now been injected into the company, and the company has already used it to buy some SOL. Of course, we have many more plans beyond that.

Host: Alright, let's talk about those plans. You're in DC now, and I want to discuss the situation there later. I see people in the chat spamming "Samani mode" and "Saylor mode," which is quite interesting. What are your plans? What are you going to do? What does the future hold for Solana and Ford?

Kyle: The future of Solana is essentially the dream that Anatoly had back in 2017 and 2018. At that time, we called it a "decentralized NASDAQ." But looking back, that was a bit of a "looking back" statement. This concept has now evolved into what we call ICM, "Internet Capital Markets."

I believe Internet Capital Markets is a grand vision; it is more imaginative, more future-oriented, and better captures the excitement that this technology may represent. What are 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 the native properties of the internet into finance. For the past 30-40 years of the software era, finance has been like a strange little bubble: operating only during limited hours, while other parts of the internet do not operate that way; financial software systems have been strictly regulated and controlled. But it turns out that with cryptography and permissionless consensus, we can bring these native characteristics of the internet into all forms of capital flow, financial flow, value flow, and trading.

This is Solana's vision; and Ford Industries hopes to contribute to pushing this forward. I believe the most important thing Ford Industries can do is to truly build the future. About six or seven weeks ago, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins gave a speech titled "Project Crypto," addressing 4,000 SEC employees. In that speech, he told all employees: we must migrate the U.S. securities market to operate on-chain. Think about what this means: it is a difficult and lengthy process involving a large number of stakeholders. The obvious ones are the NYSE, NASDAQ, but there are also DTCC, various banks, publicly listed companies, brokerages, and so on. Essentially, this is a complex and heterogeneous network of multiple stakeholders.

And the opportunity I realized is that when I entered this role as Chairman of Ford Industries, we could actually accelerate all of this. So we are now very committed to making Ford Industries the most on-chain native publicly traded company in the world. I can't talk about specific details yet, but generally, this will involve both the capital markets side and the company operations side. The capital markets side means we plan to tokenize our own stock. Once we tokenize our stock on Solana, we will implement a whole set of things like dividends, equity governance (shareholder governance), stock splits, financing, etc., all on-chain. On the operations side, we hope to move our core business operations on-chain.

This means on-chain trading—by the way, we have already done this: the first thing we did after the settlement was to buy $1 million worth of SOL through Dflow on-chain. We hit multiple Prop AMMs to buy 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 and vendor payments, on Solana, proving to the world that all of this can be done. This way, when the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and tenth companies join, there will be a viable path to follow.

Host: Wow, first of all, that's a lot of information, and secondly, it's a very clever "leading by example" marketing: you do it—others will eventually have to do it too. Very cool. I did see that Dflow transaction, and I give a thumbs up to those Prop AMMs; they are indeed an exciting new development. Alright, there's a lot of content here; I hope my quants have clipped this segment.

Okay, Kyle, I also want to ask: you recently attended the All-In Summit and gave a speech—on such a large platform, I feel that the attention that speech received was actually relatively low. I guess the video will be released soon. And now you're in DC, or have been communicating with them. Compare the views of Solana from different circles in New York, San Francisco, and DC: how do they see us, and how do they view crypto?

Kyle: You know that old image of "blind men touching an elephant": different people touch different parts and think it's different things. I think "Internet Capital Markets" is that elephant; everyone sees it from different angles.

People on Wall Street see it as a trading system, and they generally like it; people in DC might say, oh, this thing is new and a bit scary, I need you to help me understand it, maybe it's not so scary after all; people in San Francisco would say, man, this 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 currently in DC, meeting with some very important figures to push the crypto agenda in DC. We are advancing the Clarity Act and several other matters.

Host: Got it. If there aren't 50 different "elephant-themed" tokens on-chain, I would be disappointed (laughs). Solana community, step it up, give me an elephant, and remember to tag me. You mentioned before that you would deploy some capital into DeFi, but more broadly, you want to run the business on Solana. Part of that is clearly similar to the "Saylor strategy," where you come here to win, so you want to accumulate SOL. You mentioned a concept that I find particularly interesting—I have already stolen it and tweeted about it—called M asset, or other strategic Ms.

Kyle: I think this is inevitable. I don't know, but there are currently about 20 DATs operating online (fluctuating up and down), and I wouldn't be surprised if that number becomes 40 or 50 in the not-too-distant future. But I don't think the market can support that many. So I think consolidation is inevitable, and the most logical acquirers will be other DATs.

Host: Very interesting. I just remembered a question I forgot to ask: when you communicate with regulators in DC, or even with people in Europe or elsewhere, the common bias in the past (especially in January) was that—Solana is just a meme. 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 kind of trolls on Twitter, just people who are not up to date, what would be your key points?

Kyle: I think you have to look at this from a historical perspective on finance. Look at the history of finance: as long as people think they can play some "games" in the market to reap benefits, they will do so. This can be traced back to the days of commodity trading hundreds of years ago. The earliest stock markets in the U.S. can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they developed well at first, then faced the Great Depression. After the economic collapse, fraudsters tried to profit from the stock market. Our solution was a series 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 pieces of legislation remain the cornerstone of the rules governing American capitalism and the financial system even 90 years later.

I emphasize this not to say that finance is bad, but to help everyone understand: smart but unethical people will always try to exploit the financial system for profit. So it relies on regulators, self-regulatory organizations (like FINRA in the U.S.), and good actors in the industry, such as exchanges, banks, and brokerages, to work together to establish a set of rules that encourage healthy market behavior. This is an endless "cat-and-mouse" game: there will never be a logical endpoint. The market will evolve, and the cat-and-mouse game will evolve accordingly. With this new paradigm of crypto, the game has changed; people are adapting a bit slowly, but that's okay—everyone will adapt, and we will ultimately achieve a net improvement in the system.

Host: Very cool. Alright, I want to wrap up with a segment of "bullish motivation for the little Solana manlets." But before that, let's "cool down" a bit. We are obviously bullish on Solana. To be honest, you might be even more bullish than I am, which is impressive. Setting aside our positions, what do you think Solana needs to improve the most right now? You are also a VC, investing in projects and fixing network shortcomings. What do you think must be improved as soon as possible?

Kyle: The top priority in my mind right now is to tokenize the stock of Ford Industries (our stock code is FORD). People have 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 yet to be meaningfully realized.

Our good friends at Galaxy tokenized their equity on Solana using Superstate a week or two ago; obviously, the scale is still relatively small. I believe the most important thing for the Solana community and ecosystem in the short term is to really push this forward. We are advancing our own equity tokenization; then we need to collaborate with ecosystem partners—wallets, market makers, etc.—to ensure there is trading liquidity on-chain; and then work with DeFi protocols to ensure that this type of equity can serve as effective collateral in various DeFi systems.

So we need to pull the entire chain together. Everything in finance requires multi-party collaboration, and we need to get all parties running simultaneously and push forward in a coordinated manner. I am fortunate to be in this position and have these networks of relationships to try to coordinate all parties and truly pull this off.

Host: Alright. Now let's play a role-playing game. Imagine you're on a CNBC show, and I'm a host who looks a bit better than Jim Cramer (a famous bald host on CNBC) but not as good as Andrew Ross Sorkin (laughs).

Kyle: You are definitely more entertaining, Mert; I give you that.

Host: Great (laughs). Now you're on stage, and let's say Tom is waiting backstage, and you want to make him "nervous." You want to send a message to all the "boomers": why will Solana continue to grow from here? Why Solana? How would you deliver your golden thirty seconds?

Kyle: I think this statement is quite simple: Ethereum was a groundbreaking technology when it was born in 2015. Solana learned a lot from Ethereum, but they didn't iterate the system quickly enough. Today, Ethereum is over 10 years old (it just celebrated its tenth birthday a couple of months ago), and it can still only handle about 20 transactions per second (TPS), fluctuating up and down. This is clearly insufficient to support global finance, payments, and so on. This conclusion doesn't require much thought. Solana isn't at a "perfect" level yet, but at least Solana is more credible today to support 8 billion people participating in these Internet capital markets. With the GENIUS Act just passed (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.

Speaking of "Project Crypto" and the securities market: Chairman Atkins wants this to happen. The Solana network can currently handle about 10 billion transactions per day (fluctuating up and down), and we are quite optimistic that this number will grow significantly in the coming months and years. Look at the actual "transaction volume" settled daily by major stock exchanges around the world (NYSE, NASDAQ, London, Singapore, etc.), which is less than 10 billion. Of course, the total number of orders placed and canceled will exceed 10 billion, but the actual transactions are less than 10 billion per day. What I mean is to help everyone understand: we have a set of technical valves, and at least there is a reasonable claim to settle not just U.S. but global securities trading volume. We have a long way to go, but we are clearly not at 20 TPS. If you believe in the vision of crypto and the global Internet capital markets, you must have a scalable chain. Solana is currently the strongest chain in terms of performance and scalability—this has been repeatedly proven across numerous metrics.

Host: Alright, our staff is already speeding up the editing of this segment (laughs). Kyle, thank you very much for coming. I wish you all the best in DC, and I wish Ford success as well. For those who want to contact Kyle, remember to send him a bunch of long analogies on Twitter, preferably with no context, the less concise, the better.

Kyle: Thank you for the invitation, Mert. Thank you, everyone. It’s great to see you all. Goodbye.

Host: Alright, thank you all for participating. I hope you enjoyed this "second episode but first bald version" of the Solana live stream. There will be many more to come. If you have suggestions for connections, send them over. Thank you very much. Ah, I feel like I've been "cut off" at the Grammys or Oscars (laughs). Good night, everyone, goodbye, goodbye.

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