Author: jords

Translated by: Shenchao TechFlow

Shenchao Introduction: Starting to advocate for Solana in 2021, helping friends to experience the ecosystem by giving away SOL for free, to completely shifting to Hyperliquid by 2025—not because of a collapse of belief, but because the same conviction found a more capable team. This lengthy article sparked a lot of discussions in the English-speaking community, and the comments section features the presence of Solana founder Toly.

Recently, many people have been asking me what I think about the current situation of Solana. I understand why people are asking, because from 2021 to 2024, I was one of the most vocal bulls for Solana. I still remember the first time I used Solana; the experience was much smoother than ETH, to the point where I later began to dislike using Ethereum.

I consider myself an early user of the Solana ecosystem. Sometimes I look out the window, reminiscing about the days of Sollet, $COPE, and SolPunks. I accumulated followers on Twitter by promoting what was happening on Solana, persuading ETH natives to believe that a gas fee-free world exists. The narrative back then was that Solana was a broken chain, a target for many jokes.

I even have a friend in real life who completely did not believe my pitch when SOL was under 20 USD; I directly transferred him 1 SOL, with a list of agreements for him to try, to help him understand. He never tried it and still laments how his life could have changed. I feel I can confidently say that I was once a very steadfast ambassador for Solana. I co-founded BOOGLE, attended all Breakpoint/Hacker House events, and hosted other activities. A significant portion of early art liquidity was brought in by me. Along the way, I made many good friends, and I still love those brothers who are building there.

But all of this leads to my current thoughts. I basically took a year off in 2025. At the end of 2024, around the inauguration, I sold all my coins, tired of cryptocurrency, having reached the goals of this cycle. I traveled, but occasionally still kept an eye on things. $TRUMP launched while I was offline for a week, and so did $MELANIA. I missed them all. I know friends made or lost millions during that time, while I was studying—I wouldn’t change that choice.

The kind of curiosity that made me believe Solana was the best L1 has been heavily criticized by my ETH friends, but it's evident to me. Toly talks about NASDAQ at light speed, and I really believe Solana is most likely to achieve that goal.

But for some reason, there has never been a good DEX on Solana; I just don’t understand. Over the years, I’ve tried all of them—Drift, Mango, Adrena. Too many times I was promised the moon, only to find another mediocre DEX. Even today this continues to happen, and some people still recommend Phoenix Trade (another mediocre DEX) to me. Jupiter is a phenomenal swap product I can use as an example, but there’s nothing similar in trading.

For those who currently question my position bias, they may not remember that the first time I publicly posted about Hyperliquid, it was because I was saddened that the best DEX was only accessible through Arbitrum. I really can’t believe I had to leave Solana for that product, which truly supports the core argument of Solana. I have no emotional attachment to Arbitrum and don’t buy into the L2 narrative, but the product itself speaks volumes; it’s very clear to me. The curiosity and objectivity that initially guided me to Solana ultimately led me to Hyperliquid.

I do feel the need to reiterate that I don’t believe Solana must fail for my position to succeed; that idea is quite immature. What frustrates me is that Solana, as a blockchain, seems unable to truly move towards the established goal of "light speed NASDAQ."

I respect many teams on Solana and their ability to build solid infrastructure. I have nothing bad to say about many people doing good in this ecosystem, but I no longer believe Solana has the capability to achieve their established goals. I see the core team of Hyperliquid building toward the goal of "the home of all finance," and I believe their chances of achieving it are much greater.

Solana actually reached a partnership with NASDAQ (xstocks/kraken), but all serious trading volumes go through HL’s HIP-3, despite that partnership.

This post was not intended to compare HL vs Solana, but this really is the core reason people are asking me for my thoughts now. I believe the absence of a foundation on HL will cause many problems, just as a foundation on Solana can also cause issues. In fact, I have many thoughts about where HL can do better. They are somewhat like the opposite of Solana; the core team is neglecting/not prioritizing building L1 and the cultural layer to attract new everyday users (HyperEVM). But they are absolutely laser-focused on their established mission of "becoming the home of all finance."

There is no perfect solution, but in terms of my personal beliefs, this is my current stance and the reason I am currently so vocal in supporting Hyperliquid. This is the same conviction on the same topic, only now with a team I believe is more capable of execution. Solana is still a great chain, and I think they can continue to build market share with memecoins, but I do not believe they will be the house of all finance.

Toly's reply in the comments section:

Building a permissionless L1 and a DEX on top of it that can compete on price with Binance is harder than building a CEX.

So it takes longer, and the blows from failure are heavier. We actually achieved tighter spreads in spot trading than Binance, which is really insane; now I hope the ecosystem can achieve tighter spreads in perpetual contracts.

How much TAM (total addressable market) and PMF (product-market fit) these teams can capture depends on the market gods. The best thing we can do is to clear technical barriers for them.