Introduction

In crypto, investors often find themselves drawn to the use of $BTC and $ETH as performance benchmarks. Bitcoin’s steadfast presence as the Polar Star, and Ethereum’s role as a programmable layer for money and trustless systems, laid out the groundwork to realize the vision of what decentralized ownership of a network actually represents.

Both $ETH and $BTC are the current indisputable leaders in market capitalization and have successfully been approved to be traded in US spot ETFs. While this paves the way for institutional adoption and enhances the recognition of crypto as an asset class, we cannot overlook the fact that, after a decade and billions in investments, the elusive “killer app” for crypto remains undiscovered — one that the everyday person will feel severe pain if it were taken away from them.

The following is not a thesis on Solana where we express optimism and a bullish outlook for the potential approval of a spot ETF. Instead, we will go beyond the network’s resilience since the collapse of FTX and highlight its differentiating value proposition as the main driver behind a compelling opportunity: the fast lane for the adoption of crypto as an asset class.

The industry now stands at a crucial juncture where the next few years will determine whether blockchains can actually transform the world or remain confined to niche applications. If we are to realize this potential, then a scalable infrastructure and Layer 1 is a critical requirement, and Solana can play that role thanks to its differentiating factors from Ethereum. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the trade-offs that Solana makes, sacrificing some degree of decentralization for enhanced performance and dApp composability, uniquely position $SOL to power the actual transition from an online to an on-chain world – one that is also powered by high throughput and low transaction costs.

Currently, some of the intrinsic properties that give value to Ethereum are not exclusive to it. What truly sets blockchains apart is their adoption and activity levels, not only looking at the past and present but also projecting further growth into the future. Solana’s technological readiness and growing ecosystem provide the fastlane to accelerate the promises of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap, which has traditionally been characterized as being highly academic and rather slow.

The investment thesis for $SOL has nothing to do with the most recent announcements or possibilities of having a spot ETF. Instead, the upside hinges on the belief that the demand for faster and cheaper transactions will increase rapidly, and if we truly want to unlock use cases that are uniquely enabled by blockchains today, then we have to be aware that the clock is ticking. To capitalize on such an opportunity it is imperative to pick the fastest horse and not be fooled by academic or research-driven approaches that are prone to keep moving the goalposts, breaking composability and fragmenting liquidity as a result.