As cryptocurrency prices continue to fall and speculative narratives lose traction, Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, is calling for the industry to return to what she sees as blockchain’s original and most durable purpose: finance.
In a post shared on X on Thursday, Liu pushed back against years of attempts to position blockchains as a broad replacement for the modern internet. Instead, she argued that the core value of blockchain technology has always been rooted in financial systems, particularly open capital markets and financial infrastructure.
“Blockchains have always been and always will be tech for finance,” Liu wrote, emphasizing that financialization ,not generalized consumer applications—is the sector’s strongest use case.
Rejecting Web3 Consumer Narratives
Liu was especially critical of past efforts to stretch blockchain into areas such as gaming and broad “web3” consumer narratives. She described these approaches as intellectually weak and overly dependent on marketing slogans rather than real market demand.
According to Liu, simply placing existing applications on a blockchain—often framed around ideas like “read, write, own” , does not automatically create value. True adoption, she argued, comes from building entirely new financial markets and products that are only possible because of blockchain technology.
Her remarks signal frustration with years of experimentation that promised mass adoption but failed to deliver sustainable economic models.
Timing Amid Market Weakness
The comments arrive during a period of sharp market decline, with major cryptocurrencies sliding amid macroeconomic uncertainty and fading speculative appetite. Assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have both come under pressure, reinforcing the need for clearer long-term direction beyond price-driven hype cycles.
Despite the downturn, institutional interest has not disappeared. Traditional financial firms continue to explore tokenization, on-chain settlement, and blockchain-based payment rails , areas that align closely with Liu’s emphasis on finance-first utility.
A Broader Industry Recalibration
Liu’s perspective reflects a wider shift among crypto leaders toward narrower, more focused visions for blockchain’s role. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has recently signaled a renewed focus on Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling roadmap, dialing back emphasis on an increasingly fragmented layer-2 ecosystem.
This shift highlights a growing consensus that usability, coherence, and core infrastructure matter more than sprawling narratives that attempt to position blockchain as a solution for everything.
Back to First Principles
Taken together, these developments point to a broader recalibration underway across the crypto industry. As prices fall and speculative excess fades, industry leaders are increasingly returning to first principles , arguing that blockchain’s long-term relevance lies in its ability to transform financial markets, not replace the internet or chase consumer trends.
Liu’s message is clear: if crypto is to mature beyond cycles of hype and collapse, it must refocus on building real financial systems that solve problems traditional infrastructure cannot.
