Ultimate Narrative: Making Bridges a "Function" Rather than a "Decoration"

Author: Charlie Liu

As I recently wrote in The New Battlefield of Stablecoins: The Layer 1 Battle between Stripe and Circle, the inter-chain conflict has escalated from the L2 battle between Coinbase and Robinhood to the L1 clash between Circle and Stripe.

But this time it’s different.

Base has announced an official interoperability path with Solana, which is not just about "assets being able to cross over," but rather downgrading the choice of "which chain to use" to a backend setting, while upgrading "who controls the default route from intent to transaction" into an investable and operational business.

In a market where new L1/L2s are emerging, stablecoin trading volumes are skyrocketing, RWA and DAT are on the rise, and challenger exchanges are eating into market share, this is a long-term bet on "traffic engineering."

Why Both "Operating Systems" Need Each Other

This is not a science question of "What is Base / What is Solana." The key lies in what each excels at and what they have sacrificed.

Base ties distribution, identity, and Ethereum's settlement power together, forming a massive funnel of "compliance entry + EVM assets"; the cost is that it does not excel in ultra-low-latency interactions.

Solana maximizes throughput and user experience; the cost is being just a step away from EVM-native funds and institutional distribution.

In other words, Base holds the entry points for "people" and "money," while Solana captures the "feel" and "speed."

A bridge that treats these differences as "features" rather than "contradictions" is essentially optimizing the allocation of workloads.

Identity, compliance, governance, and deep liquidity remain with Base; high-frequency segments that require speed and smooth experience are with Solana; routing is automatically arranged in the background, without requiring users to change wallets or teams to alter their tech stack.

The trade-offs on both sides do not need to be smoothed over; instead, they can compound within the same user journey.

Why Not Just an Upgrade of Front-End Experience

On the surface, this is a bi-directional channel that has been "officially named": allowing SOL to be called like a local asset in the EVM stream, and enabling Base-side assets to naturally express themselves on Solana.

More importantly, it is about positioning—this is not a side door for geeks, but a "default pathway" aimed at the general public.

When bridging is productized and embedded into wallets and payment paths, users do not need to change environments; they perform the same actions, just on a more suitable lane in the background.

The impact on market structure often involves lowering switching costs, compressing spreads, and deepening truly tradable liquidity pools, with profits naturally gravitating towards the side that "controls the last mile routing."

Moat Transforms from Technical Parameters to "Traffic Routing Rights"

Investors should view this as a payment network rather than merely "a certain chain." The entire system's "value accumulation" lies at the source of intent and the nodes of automatic routing.

Coinbase's fiat entry and Base's wallet path naturally hold upstream distribution rights; Solana's execution side captures excess returns from high-frequency scenarios. Whoever can define the default path—wallets, deposit points, aggregators—will be better positioned to build toll booths.

This is especially important now: stablecoins have become the fastest-growing business in crypto, and external giants are starting to create "payment-type L1s," making routing between different chains the focal point of the new game.

From an investment perspective, valuation logic will shift away from mere TPS worship towards "who holds the default path and settlement endpoint."

Incentives Are Not in Conflict

For startup teams, this bridging means "distribution without migration, experience without compromise."

For investors, it provides a realistic path for "single-user LTV compounding": one end is trustworthy distribution and EVM capital acceptance, while the other end is a stable, low-friction execution loop.

The rise of RWA and DAT requires both ends to be online simultaneously: operations need to be as predictable as automated systems, and audits need to be as comprehensible as financial statement notes.

ETH and SOL have become dual centers for asset and experience sides because this combination of "distribution × execution" is smooth enough; in the future, adding one or two "payment-type L1s" as traffic satellites will not disrupt the user story.

The "Monolith vs. Module" Debate Exits the Main Stage

Abstract ideological debates give way to pragmatic operational discussions.

Which segments must operate under the shadow of Ethereum's settlement and compliance, and which must run on Solana's low-latency track? Stablecoins need to traverse both sides—the answer is not ideological but based on practical use value.

For product managers, this bridging can be treated as an internal API for product development. One balance, multiple lanes, transparent fees, time-sensitive. Token issuance and economic models should clearly state "where governance is, where experience is," without letting incentives and routing clash.

For market makers, positions across runtimes can be unified into one ledger; balancing more accessible and cheaper scenarios naturally tightens terminal spreads.

For wallets and on-ramp entries, the moat is no longer "who is cheaper," but "whose default path is more user-friendly."

When you hold the default, stablecoin payments, DeFi, and consumer applications can be naturally bundled, and users do not need to "understand the bridge."

The L1/L2 War: From "Territorial Wars" to "Traffic Engineering"

Three first-principle insights for investors:

First, the ecosystem of infrastructure has included payment giants building their own L1s, which will disperse liquidity demands to more destinations, reducing the probability of a single "winner takes all."

Second, stablecoins are the demand engine, and nominal volumes will increase by another order of magnitude; chains that cannot become first-class stablecoin channels, no matter how attractive, are likely to be marginalized.

Third, the profit structure of exchanges is being rewritten by challengers. Perpetual DEXs like Hyperliquid are capturing part of the incremental gains through execution and experience; as Base ↔ Solana becomes a native path, it will be easier to go to "the tightest spreads and most stable latencies," and this trend will accelerate.

So how can we validate this wave of change? Look for three potential phenomena.

First, the correlation between Base's activity and TVL with SOL-priced flows will strengthen, and Solana's native applications will begin to naturally connect with EVM funds without needing "catch-up."

Second, deposit points and wallets will default to cross-runtime routing, with fewer detours through CEX for cross-ecosystem transfers.

Third, in the disclosures of RWA and DAT, there will be an increasing number of "dual-habitat designs": governance and settlement focus on ETH/Base, while interaction and retention focus on SOL, with the addition of one or two "stablecoin strongholds" as distribution satellites as payment-type L1s land.

Ultimate Narrative: Making Bridges a "Function" rather than a "Decoration"

Users are buying a "usable experience," not a "cool bridge."

When interoperability is made into a "observable, reliable, and user-invisible" product, we can finally take "chain selection" out of the users' hands and hand it over to backend routing.

For investors, this means a shift from "platform monopolies" to a pricing world of "networks and routing"—value more stably accumulates at the layer that controls intent, identity, and default paths.

The connection between Base and Solana is an early sample of this world: it may not declare the end of the L1–L2 war, but it will blur the boundaries enough for "traffic, rather than territory," to determine value attribution.

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