Blockchain should refocus on its original purpose: finance, Solana Foundation President Lily Liu wrote on Thursday, rejecting the long-standing narrative that sought to frame the technology as a generalized replacement for the modern internet.
“Blockchain has been and will continue to be a technology for finance,” Liu wrote, explaining that financialization and open capital markets are the sector's core value proposition.
Mr. Liu, who will be speaking at Consensus Hong Kong next week, was particularly dismissive of past efforts to shoehorn blockchain into gaming and broader “Web 3” consumer narratives, calling them intellectually lazy and overly reliant on marketing rather than true market creation. She criticized the idea that simply placing existing applications on a blockchain automatically creates value, often under the banner of “read, write, own,” arguing instead that meaningful adoption requires the creation of entirely new financial markets.
The comments come amid a sharp decline in crypto prices, with Bitcoin, Ether and other major tokens falling amid macroeconomic uncertainty and declining speculative demand. Despite the economic downturn, institutional investor interest remains strong as traditional financial companies continue to explore tokenization, on-chain payments, and payment rails.
Liu's comments come as other industry leaders are narrowing their vision of blockchain's usefulness. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently signaled his intention to double down on Ethereum's Layer 1 scaling roadmap and shift focus away from the expansive Layer 2-centric approach that has dominated Ethereum's strategy in recent years. This shift reflects the consolidation of a fragmented ecosystem to focus on ease of use and consistency.
Taken together, these comments highlight a broader readjustment underway across the industry. As prices fall, industry leaders increasingly believe the technology behind it all still has a purpose.
Read more: From 'Ethereum sidekick' to standalone star: How Vitalik Buterin's latest pivot is forcing Layer 2 growth
