Solana bids farewell to Meme hype! Backpack CEO: Financial infrastructure is the future

Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante called Solana moving from NFTs, gaming, to DeFi and payments. Despite the low price, Wall Street is interested in tokenization, stablecoins, and on-chain settlements. Solana positions itself as a neutral settlement layer, emphasizing compliance as a prerequisite.

Solana shifts from meme hype to financial infrastructure

Solana’s latest phase looks far less spectacular than its peak fueled by memecoins, and that could be exactly what it was aiming for. In an interview with CoinDesk, Armani Ferrante, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Backpack, said that the Solana ecosystem has focused more on a more pragmatic area over the past year: financial infrastructure. After years of exploration around the crypto space such as NFTs, gaming, and social tokens, attention is now turning back to decentralized finance, transactions, and payments.

“People are really starting to see blockchain as a new type of financial infrastructure,” Ferrante said. He will speak at CoinDesk’s Hong Kong Consensus Conference next month. “It’s no longer about NFTs, and it’s no longer about those random, moonshot-like games, it’s more about finance.” This formulation clearly divides the two phases of Solana’s development: the early experimentation and hype phase, and the current pragmatic and application phase.

This shift has left some outside observers feeling a bit boring for Solana, but Ferrante sees it as a symbol of maturity. This network is increasingly being laid out around high-throughput on-chain transactions, market structures and settlements, which some call the “network capital market”. From speculative targets to infrastructure platforms, this transformation is not uncommon in blockchain history. Ethereum has also experienced a similar transition from the ICO boom to the DeFi summer.

Although meme coins can attract a lot of attention and trading volume in the short term, they lack long-term value support. NFTs and games, while offering some utility, have limited market size and sustainability. In contrast, financial infrastructure serves a multi-trillion-dollar global market with consistent demand. Solana’s choice to focus on this area indicates a shift in its strategic focus from pursuing short-term heat to building long-term value.

From a technical perspective, Solana’s high throughput (theoretical 65,000 transactions per second) and low fees (typically below $0.001) make it naturally suitable for financial applications. While traditional financial systems have settlement speeds in days, Solana can achieve settlements in seconds. This performance advantage is particularly evident when handling a large number of small transactions or high-frequency transactions, which is exactly what financial infrastructure needs.

Wall Street has never been more bullish on Solana and blockchain

This shift comes at a time when cryptocurrency market sentiment is diverging significantly from traditional financial markets. Florante said that while cryptocurrency prices remain low and crypto-native investors remain cautious, institutional investors’ interest in cryptocurrencies has never been greater. “If you ask anyone on Wall Street, they’ll tell you they’ve never been more bullish on this aspect,” he said, noting the growing momentum of tokenization, stablecoins, and on-chain settlement.

This divergence in market sentiment is extremely rare. Typically, the sentiment of institutional and retail investors is roughly synchronized – both optimistic in bull markets and pessimistic in bear markets. But the current situation is that crypto-native investors are frustrated by falling prices, while Wall Street is excited about the mature infrastructure. This divergence could signal a structural shift in the market, shifting from a speculative market dominated by retail investors to an application market dominated by institutions.

Wall Street’s interest is focused on three areas: tokenization, stablecoins, and on-chain settlement. Tokenization refers to the conversion of traditional assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. into tokens on the blockchain. This conversion can reduce transaction costs, improve liquidity, and enable 24/7 trading. Several large financial institutions are already testing tokenized securities, and Solana is one of the important candidates due to its performance advantages.

In terms of stablecoins, major issuers such as Tether and Circle have already deployed significant liquidity on Solana. Stablecoin transfers on Solana are fast and low-cost, making them an ideal tool for cross-border payments and remittances. With the improved regulatory environment and the increase in compliant stablecoins, this market is expected to grow exponentially. On-chain settlement refers to the final delivery of securities and derivatives transactions directly on the blockchain, bypassing traditional clearing houses and custodian banks. This can reduce settlement time from T+2 (two days after a trade) to almost instantaneous, significantly reducing counterparty risk.

Ferrante believes that the long-term development prospects of Solana and even the entire blockchain depend on their role as a neutral settlement layer. In the future, assets such as stocks and derivatives will flow seamlessly between platforms in the form of standardized tokens, rather than being stored in siloed databases. Ferrante said, “Tokens are nothing more than an officially recognized ledger record of ownership. This concept applies to all situations.”

Compliance is a sign of maturity, not a barrier

Crucially, Ferrante emphasized that the real-world application of cryptocurrencies requires deeper integration with regulatory frameworks rather than evading regulation. As cryptocurrencies shift from speculative experiments to embedded financial infrastructure, compliance and legal clarity will become prerequisites rather than barriers. “The real meaning of maturity is in the real world,” he said. “And the real world is not chaotic.”

This embrace of regulation contrasts sharply with the “anti-establishment” spirit of the early crypto circle. Early crypto believers often viewed regulation as an enemy, believing that the value of cryptocurrencies lies in evading government control. However, as the industry matures, more and more practitioners recognize that to truly serve traditional financial institutions and the mass market, they must operate within existing legal frameworks. Wall Street banks and asset managers don’t use platforms that navigate the legal gray area, they need a clear compliance path and regulatory protection.

Solana’s compliance efforts are already bearing fruit. Several regulated financial institutions are already conducting pilot projects on Solana, including payment processing, securities settlement, and asset tokenization. The successful execution of these projects provides empirical support for Solana as an enterprise-grade financial infrastructure platform. In contrast, many other blockchains still primarily serve crypto-native applications and are difficult to break through into traditional finance.

In Ferrante’s view, Solana’s bet is that working towards this reality, even if it creates less hype, will eventually pay off as global finance moves more on-chain. This is a long-term strategic choice: sacrificing short-term market popularity and token price fluctuations in exchange for long-term infrastructure status and stable revenue. This choice requires great determination, as the market often rewards short-term hype rather than long-term construction. But if Solana succeeds in becoming part of the global financial infrastructure, its value will far exceed what any meme coin craze can create.

This transformation also reflects the evolution of the entire crypto industry. After years of trial and error, the industry has come to realize that the true value of blockchain lies not in creating new speculative tools but in transforming existing financial systems. Reducing transaction costs, improving settlement efficiency, and enhancing market transparency - these are the core values that blockchain can provide to the real world. Solana’s choice to focus on this could give it a decisive advantage in the competition over the next decade.