"CT Chinese · Crypto Circle Open Mic" is a monthly crypto audio interview program created by Cointelegraph's Chinese site, airing on the last Thursday of each month at 7 PM. The show invites core practitioners and observers from various fields such as blockchain, Web3, DeFi, stablecoins, the Ethereum ecosystem, and policy regulation to discuss industry hotspots, market dynamics, and in-depth perspectives in a relaxed and open dialogue atmosphere, presenting a more authentic, diverse, and cutting-edge crypto world to the audience.
This episode's theme is: The Potential of the Solana Ecosystem Behind SOL's Strong Performance
Our invited guests include:
Frank, the head of ecosystem development from the SOON project team
Well-known KOLs from the Chinese community: Sunny and Grace
(The audio transcription has been processed by AI, with some content edited or omitted. For the complete audio, please visit the X platform.)
Host Eva:
Hello, dear listeners, welcome to today's CT Chinese Crypto Circle Open Mic AMA event. The theme of our session is "The Potential of the Solana Ecosystem Behind SOL's Strong Performance."
Recently, we noticed that Solana's price has once again broken through the $200 mark and even surged towards $250. Although there has been a price correction amid recent market fluctuations, it still shows a certain market resilience. Currently, its price is basically stable above $200, and the Solana ecosystem has also seen rapid growth in DeFi and other sectors, attracting a large number of developers and investors' attention.
Today, we are very honored to invite four guests to discuss the potential of the Solana ecosystem with us. First, we have Frank, the head of ecosystem development from the SOON project team, and three well-known KOLs from the Chinese community: Chen Jiao Shou, Grace, and Sunny Tang.
We will conduct a more in-depth discussion in this AMA around several aspects, including price driving factors, ecological potential, risk prevention, technical bottlenecks, and competitive landscape. We hope today's sharing can help everyone gain a more comprehensive understanding of Solana's development logic and future opportunities.
Before we start, let's ask the guests to introduce themselves briefly. Let's start with Frank.
Frank:
Hello everyone, I am the head of the ecosystem at SOON. I have actually been in the crypto space for many years and have done quite a bit of investment and incubation work. I joined the SOON project at its early stage and have been responsible for ecosystem development. Let me briefly introduce what SOON is doing.
We have been focusing on the Solana Extension, on one hand, expanding the SVM infrastructure, bringing Solana's execution environment to other chains like BNB and BASE. On the other hand, we are incubating our own products like simpfor.fun, replicating established products to bring Solana-level trading experiences to users in other ecosystems.
In this industry, the SOON project is still quite new, considered a newcomer. We just completed our TGE in May this year and launched on all major exchanges. I am very happy to discuss some of the progress of Solana and SOON with everyone from an ecological and technical perspective today.
Grace: I have also been in the crypto space for a few years. I remember when I bought Solana a few years ago, it was only a few dollars. I think it has made a significant leap and has remained very active. I am a writer and often host bilingual Twitter spaces in the U.S. I am very much looking forward to interacting and learning from the experts on this topic today.
Sunny: Hello everyone, thank you very much for the host's invitation. I am Sunny, and I am very happy to be invited to today's space. I look forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the entire industry and Solana's ecosystem through the sharing of the other guests. Currently, I am involved in operations at Ctalks, a Web3 vertical media outlet. We also have our own official website and conduct both online and offline activities. We welcome projects and other partners with media needs to collaborate and learn from each other.
Host Eva:
Let's start with the first question. After Solana previously broke through $250, although the market experienced some fluctuations, its price is still relatively resilient. People are concerned about the institutional or external driving forces behind this round of Solana's strength. I would like to ask Grace and Sunny to share your views on this question.
Grace:
As the host mentioned, Solana recently surged to $250, and the correction is still oscillating above $200, showing a stable momentum. I believe this wave of increase is not only due to a good market but also has real hard support behind it. Why is it rising? Two words can summarize it: mentality and confidence.
The ecosystem has exploded in the past few months, with DeFi, NFT, and MEME coins all thriving on Solana. Users have returned, and on-chain activity has skyrocketed. Projects like BONK and WIF have directly driven the demand for Solana. It’s not just about speculating; there are real use cases. Many people are continuously using staking, swapping, participating in new projects, and playing games, generating tens of millions of dollars in gas fees, indicating that this chain is very vibrant.
Moreover, institutions are optimistic, viewing Solana as a challenger to Ethereum. With the ETF buzz, capital has started to focus on Solana, making it one of the preferred targets.
Additionally, the market is warming up, with BTC stabilizing and tech stocks rebounding in the U.S. As risk appetite rises, funds naturally flow into high-beta assets, and Solana is one of them. It offers high returns, and there are great expectations for it. This round is no longer just speculation; the ecosystem is genuinely thriving, and market sentiment is also improving, which is a dual driving force. Solana's price has consistently remained above $200, indicating a solid foundation. As long as we have a large number of users, this story can continue to be told, and I hope Solana can maintain its momentum and continue to improve.
Sunny:
From my perspective, first of all, regarding its institutional aspects, I believe that Solana's own technology and ecosystem upgrades provide a very solid foundation for its price. Recently, there have been many performance optimizations on its network, such as the Alpenglow upgrade, which significantly improved transaction throughput and confirmation speed.
The network's processing capability is becoming stronger, and the overall user experience is smoother. I think this is a cornerstone for its ecosystem development and a major reason for attracting more developers to build within the ecosystem.
Another point I want to touch on is its staking rate. I checked that as of September 16, Solana's total staking amount was approximately $408 million, accounting for 66.9% of its total supply, which is very high among mainstream networks. For example, Ethereum, the mother of all chains, is only around 40%. Moreover, the staking value is not only from retail investors but also includes DeFi protocols, corporate treasuries, foundations, and institutional whales. This creates a relatively broad and stable market, so in the short term, its selling pressure is very limited, and the price has more backing.
Additionally, regarding external driving forces, I believe that institutional and corporate layouts, expectations for derivatives, and the macroeconomic environment are all significant factors. For instance, according to data from Strategy Solana Reserve, 17 entities have established Solana treasuries, totaling approximately 17.11 million Solana.
Among them, companies like Forward Industries and SEC have submitted a $4 billion ATM plan to support their financial strategies.
This layout not only reduces the overall selling pressure in the market but also makes Solana appear more like a long-term investment target in the eyes of investors.
I also mentioned the expectations for derivatives; the Chicago Mercantile Exchange plans to launch Solana futures options on October 13, which means institutional investors can enter the Solana market through more standardized tools to increase liquidity.
Finally, regarding the macroeconomic environment, as everyone knows, the SEC has lowered interest rates. The implementation of the U.S. interest rate cut policy has warmed the overall financial environment, and I believe that the re-entry of funds is a major factor influencing the overall price increase. That’s my perspective.
Host Eva:
Thank you, Sunny, for your wonderful sharing. Our second question is that we have seen the rapid expansion of Solana's ecosystem, with many outstanding projects emerging. If we look at it from the dimensions of technology, business models, community, and sustainability, which 2-3 projects do you think are the most promising? I would like to ask Sunny to share your choices again.
Sunny:
Based on this question, I would like to share two projects that I think are quite good.
First, the first one is pump.fun, which is a meme coin launch platform. I think its popularity is very high, and the market sentiment and innovative points it brings are quite impressive.
From a technical perspective, it is built on Solana's high-performance chain, with speed and operational smoothness, including high-frequency trading and NFTs.
I find its business model very interesting. The core of pump.fun is zero-barrier token creation and profit sharing. Users can create their own meme tokens in just a few minutes, and the platform's transaction fee is 1%, of which 50% is returned to the token creators. This incentivizes creators to continuously issue and promote their tokens while allowing the platform to generate stable income. According to some public data, pump.fun has already generated over $700 million in protocol revenue, which is quite astonishing. At its peak, its daily revenue can reach millions of dollars, demonstrating the feasibility of its business model and its inherent profitability, which is still relatively rare in the entire industry, even though it currently has some strong competitors.
Additionally, regarding community activity, I believe its community is very vibrant. It integrates the thoughts of creators, balancing the interaction between creators and token holders. Moreover, the entire team has launched features like project ascend and live streaming, enhancing user engagement and ecological stickiness, allowing the community to not only stay at the trading level but also participate in the platform's governance and innovative activities in the long term. This is why I am optimistic about pump.fun.
Another project is Penguin, which I think has some similarities with pump.fun. The overall community activity and business model are quite innovative, allowing community members or token holders to sustainably contribute to the entire ecosystem. Everyone can find some recognition in it, both emotionally and economically.
Host Eva:
For ordinary investors, as the Solana ecosystem rapidly explodes, how should we distinguish between potential high-growth projects and high-risk projects? Is there a screening framework or risk prevention advice in everyone's mind? I would like to ask Grace to provide some rational judgment thoughts on this question.
Grace:
Recently, the Solana ecosystem has been very lively, with new projects popping up, and there are many opportunities, but everyone should also be cautious about avoiding pitfalls. As ordinary users or investors, how do we determine which are potential stocks and which are high-risk areas? I’ll share a few suggestions.
First, we need to look at the team. Is the team real-name verified, and is there a record on-chain? Anonymity is acceptable, but there should be reliable works to back it up. Then, look at the product—has the application actually launched, or is it just a white paper and a roadmap? Is the code open-source, and is there a third-party audit report, such as from well-known institutions like Neodyme or Halborn? Also, examine the token model—does it issue a massive amount of tokens right away, and does the team hold a high proportion?
Finally, observe the community atmosphere. As Sunny just shared, the community atmosphere is very important. Is it discussing technological advancements or is it emotionally driven? Don’t let short-term surges cloud your judgment to go all in; you still need to make rational assessments. For example, start with a small position to test the waters, understand the logic, and then increase your position. Set profit-taking and stop-loss points, keep up with community and official information, and learn fundamental analysis.
In summary, use these methods to judge and avoid pitfalls, and truly find potential stocks, because we are here to mine and double our investments, so we must be cautious to avoid pitfalls. That’s my simple analysis.
Sunny:
I think this is a very good question. We can see that the entire industry is rapidly developing, and new people are continuously joining the industry. How to accommodate this new user traffic in different tracks, and how to filter in different tracks, is actually a very bidirectional selection issue.
As users, when judging some projects, the first point is to look at the technology and product implementation. We often hear narratives in the industry, but when we look at the actual implementation of technology or products, it often hasn’t been put into action and is just theoretical. For high-growth projects, they usually have reliable technology, fast transaction experiences, and some practical application cases, which I think is a very important reference point.
The second point is to look at the overall business model and economic incentives. For a project to market itself or gain acceptance, it must show its value and core aspects. As mentioned earlier, technology is the foundation, but whether this thing has users and is well-regarded is what we should think about more. For example, pump.fun has proven its profitability through its capabilities, not just theoretical discussions.
In summary, we can filter projects based on their business models, economic model settings, airdrops, staking, token consumption mechanisms, etc.
Another point is that the community is also a very core aspect of the entire project. Without a community, the project lacks popularity, and no one will pay attention to it. As we often say, whether the sentiment has risen can be seen in whether there is a strong consensus in the core community recognizing the project and helping it gain more visibility.
I think these points are very, very important. That’s my perspective.
Host Eva:
Now, we would also like to ask Frank to share from the project perspective how you establish trust and transparency within the community.
Frank:
I think what Grace and Sunny just said is very comprehensive. I can share my views from the project perspective and discuss some logic that can be applied in common project assessments.
I believe that for SOON or all ecosystems now, projects can be divided into two categories: one is purely meme-based, and the other is product-supported. Personally, I find it difficult to say that there is a systematic trading experience for purely meme-based projects. However, for project teams, I think ordinary investors can avoid many risks through some desktop research.
In this cycle of projects, a key aspect we examine is the execution capability demonstrated by the team. We can cross-verify historical information to see if the project team has communicated their commitments effectively.
For example, Grace and Sunny both mentioned products, and I think products are indeed crucial. I highly recommend that most investors experience the product before buying a project’s tokens to see if it is useful, how well it works, and the speed of its product iterations.
Sometimes we cannot pursue a perfect product, but we can gather historical commitments regarding milestones. For instance, after one month, three months, or six months, we can check if the milestones have been achieved. At that point, we can assess the project’s fulfillment quality and whether the team has been efficiently building their project and providing accountability to the community.
Another very important point in this cycle is the attitude towards community feedback. Frankly speaking, there is no perfect project execution. Throughout the development process, from before TGE to after TGE, there will be many issues regarding product design, airdrop design, and later staking mechanisms and ecosystem development.
How the team responds to issues raised by public media and the internal community—whether they avoid, respect, or adopt them—is very important. You can discover this by reviewing past records. We can also see if the project has a very professional community manager and whether the founding team has been actively maintaining positive communication with the community.
I remember during the project development process, we felt there were issues with the airdrop design. At that point, I believe a basic quality for a project team is to maintain smooth communication with community members. Some suggestions from community members were indeed very good, and we immediately issued a public statement to execute and turn all the excellent suggestions from the community into product proposals to report back to everyone.
So I think these aspects are very important for doing a high-quality project in the current cycle, and they can also serve as evaluation standards for risk control.
Host Eva: In the entire expansion of the Solana ecosystem, there are indeed some technical bottlenecks, such as scalability and network congestion. I would particularly like to ask Frank to discuss how SOON mitigates or addresses these challenges in product and infrastructure design.
Frank:
This question may be more technical, so I will focus on discussing it from the perspective of Solana or SVM technology. I believe that in the current stage of competition, the price of cryptocurrencies is certainly a very important aspect mentioned by many guests.
Another aspect is the competition at the application layer, where the core is SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) and EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine). The competition between these two execution environments is significant. Solana's SVM architecture has proven its stability and performance through two to three years of operation, making it a very high-quality execution environment.
However, since Solana's SVM was developed as a standalone network, many of its designs did not consider modularity and other necessary requirements compared to EVM. Therefore, when we use the existing SVM execution layer as a consolidated module, it encounters many structural limitations that hinder its performance from being fully realized. This is why Soon and the Solana team have been working on the Soon SVM stack, aiming to ensure that SVM can adapt to this situation and achieve seamless interoperability between ecosystems.
From a technical stack perspective, we are redesigning the SVM architecture to support various consensus mechanisms, optimize many resources, and integrate with mainstream Layer 2 solutions like OP Stack to enhance the efficiency of state transaction processing in SVM. We particularly advocate a concept called Decouple SVM to achieve horizontal scalability. I wonder if everyone understands the concept of performance scaling. Unlike continuous scaling of a single machine's performance, horizontal scaling allows for the addition of many similar machines and nodes to expand the overall system capacity.
Through this architecture, the SVM based on the Soon stack can dynamically adjust its network architecture requirements while ensuring consistently high processing speeds.
On the other hand, there is also the issue of ZK. As everyone knows, Ethereum has many discussions about ZK, but the SVM environment has always lagged in ZK research and development.
We have just launched the first Rollup testnet supporting ZK SVM, making us the only one currently capable of running ZK SVM in a production environment. This is achieved by replacing the traditional full proof based on optimistic proof economic assumptions with ZK full proof, ensuring that the execution environment has Ethereum-level security while maintaining the high-performance characteristics of Solana's SVM. Additionally, through recursive proofs, we combine the high throughput and low latency of SVM's high-frequency trading with security, ensuring the realization of high-quality DeFi operations and high-frequency performance applications.
These are the issues we have identified in the current technical architecture of Solana, and we have been closely collaborating with the official team, while our own technical team is also working hard to address them.
Host Eva:
The next question is about regulation. The U.S. is now accelerating the listing of spot crypto ETFs, which is seen as an important signal for market institutionalization. Everyone is concerned about what impact this may have on the entire crypto market, and how Solana ecosystem projects should prepare for compliance to avoid future legal or policy risks. We would like to first ask Grace to share her thoughts on this.
Grace:
I think this question is indeed a hot topic right now, as many spot crypto ETFs have recently been approved. This not only relaxes restrictions on Bitcoin but also represents a key step towards compliance for the entire industry, meaning institutional funds can enter the market openly. With the influx of large institutional funds, market volatility will gradually decrease, and crypto assets are starting to gain mainstream recognition.
For the Solana ecosystem, opportunities and challenges have arisen. If compliance is not handled well, some projects may encounter issues. It is advised not to just promise high returns; it is also essential to focus on practical functionality and not let people feel that it is merely a speculative contract. This is the first point.
Secondly, if KYC is required, then implement KYC. This is especially important when it involves fiat currency inflows and outflows, as well as staking returns, where security is crucial. Manage user regions well; for example, the U.S. has strict regulations, so technical measures can be used to restrict access from high-risk areas. Additionally, use compliant tools, such as choosing reliable auditing firms and on-chain monitoring tools, and collaborate with compliant infrastructure like Coinbase and Wormhole. Another point is to promote decentralized governance, giving part of the control to the community to reduce the legal risks for the team. This means that the future winners will definitely be compliant projects that are both innovative and rule-abiding.
Therefore, if Solana wants to continue leading, it must pay attention to doing compliance well.
Host Eva:
We also see that in the competitive landscape, Ethereum and its Layer 2 ecosystems are quite strong, and other emerging public chains are also accelerating their catch-up. In this context, how should Solana maintain differentiation? What unique advantages will Solana have in future high-performance and ecosystem competition? I would like to first ask Frank to discuss the project’s understanding of Solana's advantages, and then Grace can add your thoughts.
Frank:
I think there is a very obvious trend in this cycle, which is that Solana and Ethereum are competing for the position of the second-largest player in the industry. Bitcoin is the undisputed leader, but for the second position, different dimensions of comparison may yield different results, such as asset quality and quantity, trading volume, and the number of applications, where Solana and Ethereum are indeed in competition.
Returning to the key issue, I believe the entire SVM execution environment is competing with the EVM execution environment. This competition in execution environments will ultimately determine which ecosystems projects like Pump.fun will choose to build in, and where user numbers, trading volumes, and new assets will flow. This is very critical. Additionally, the discussions around Mass Adoption over the past two years revolve around whether blockchain will see the emergence of higher quality and more diverse applications, which ultimately depends on whether there is sufficient infrastructure at the chain level.
People praise Ethereum for its level of decentralization and the effectiveness of its invented smart contract system, with many protocols deployed on it. However, due to its technical architecture (EVM), it has many redundant contract deployments with similar storage logic on-chain, and its single-threaded model makes parallel processing in EVM quite challenging. Therefore, we can see that some high-performance EVM public chains focus on parallel processing.
Currently, the entire implementation standard of EVM is delegated to many application layers, resulting in a very fragmented experience and asset landscape.
Thus, I see this as an opportunity for SVM. Compared to EVM, Solana's main advantage lies in its use of Rust to write its smart contracts. Rust is considered a very important technology stack in contemporary internet development. Many may not know that some of the best Rust engineers work at major companies like Google, Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent, responsible for developing very core systems.
When Rust technology is applied to the underlying public chain, its support for concurrency, memory safety, and low-level control greatly enhances the security and predictability of the entire system's code.
The C-level architecture used by SVM allows for the separation of computational logic and account state data through a new account model, enabling high-performance parallel reading and modification of data. This allows multiple smart contracts and transactions to execute concurrently without interference. This technology stack provides a natural advantage for Solana in core applications of the next generation of blockchains, especially in high-frequency trading scenarios.
At the same time, the technical team behind Solana is continuously innovating across various technology stacks. We have achieved low-cost, fast transaction processing and alleviated network congestion, providing users with a better trading and usage experience. I believe the upcoming cycle will focus on competing for user experience in crypto products.
The competitive advantages demonstrated by Solana, both from a technical and ecosystem perspective, are significant.
Grace:
Now, looking at the competition among Ethereum, Layer 2, and other emerging public chains, Solana indeed has some core advantages that allow it to maintain differentiation. Firstly, its speed is very fast, and costs are low, providing a good user experience. Frank has analyzed the technical aspects, and we have gained a lot of insights; its innovative technology makes network ordering and transaction confirmation very efficient.
Additionally, the Solana ecosystem is currently very active, with many projects choosing to land here, such as DeFi and NFT ecosystems, which are continuously expanding. Its technical barriers are relatively high, creating a certain hardcore barrier, allowing it to maintain a leading position in technological innovation. In the future, Solana will continue to optimize performance, enhance security, and strengthen interoperability with other chains, broadening support for more cross-chain collaborations. It will also focus on certain industries, such as finance or gaming, to build its advantages, while the ecosystem will continue to grow and support more cross-chain collaborations, maintaining rapid development.
In summary, its advantages lie in speed, low cost, a rich ecosystem, and continuous technological innovation. As long as it continues to optimize, there is still significant potential to surpass other supply chains in the future.
Host Eva:
Thank you very much to all the guests for the wonderful sharing. Today, we have conducted an in-depth discussion on price drivers, ecosystem potential, investment risks, technical bottlenecks, and regulatory trends.
It can be seen that Solana has a rapidly expanding opportunity but also faces challenges in governance, technology, and compliance. However, the current market's short-term volatility remains very intense. I hope everyone will stay rational, focus on project transparency, governance, and security, and not be swayed by short-term prices. It is also important to establish your own screening framework between opportunities and risks to make long-term sustainable choices.
Our AMA concludes here. Once again, thanks to Frank, Sunny, and Grace, and thanks to all the audience friends who participated. We will see you at the next AMA.
Related: Bitcoin (BTC) market fear reaches the highest level since $83,000, analysts closely watch for a "turning point."
Original: 《CT中文·币圈开麦 | SOL强劲表现背后的Solana生态潜力》
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