Speaker 1: Currently settlement for a transaction on Solan it's about four
Speaker 1: hundred milliseconds, but there's another new technology being built which
Speaker 1: will re reduce that to about one hundred fifty milliseconds.
Speaker 1: And the reason that is so important is two hundred
Speaker 1: milliseconds is the point at which a human feels something
Speaker 1: is generally instantaneous. Since the first Solona ETFs went live
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, they have seen inflows every single
Speaker 1: trade and day since, and I think it really shows
Speaker 1: the demand and interest in Solana, which is really exciting
Speaker 1: to see.
Speaker 2: Why did you pick Solana, you know, as opposed to
Speaker 2: go work and there's a lot of blockchain projects out there.
Speaker 1: Bilan is the fastest and cheapest, most scalable Layer one blockchain.
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Speaker 2: more about Uphold and all the great services they offer,
Speaker 2: visit the link in the description. Hey folks, welcome into
Speaker 2: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your host, Tony Edward and
Speaker 2: joining me today is Nick Dukof, who is the head
Speaker 2: of Institutional Growth at the Salona Foundation. Nick, great to
Speaker 2: have you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nick, I am excited to dive into the latest
Speaker 2: and greatest around Solana. Lots happening in the Slana ecosystem,
Speaker 2: but I would love to kick it off with your
Speaker 2: background tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from,
Speaker 2: and your professional background.
Speaker 1: Sure well, thanks again for having me on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Really excited to join you today. My name is Nick
Speaker 1: dukov I, Lead Institutional Growth, Salona Foundation. I joined the
Speaker 1: Salana Foundation in the summer of twenty twenty three, so
Speaker 1: about six months after FTX, which was a really interesting
Speaker 1: time to join Salana and it's incredible to see how
Speaker 1: far the ecosystem has come since then. Prior to joining Solana,
Speaker 1: I was a venture capitalist working at a Jill's Fund
Speaker 1: leading crypto investments, and prior to that I had a
Speaker 1: couple careers. But I started my career as a securities lawyer,
Speaker 1: working out deals like the MySpace acquisition by Fox. I
Speaker 1: then left the practice in twenty ten to take a
Speaker 1: shot at entrepreneurship, and it was very fortunate that I
Speaker 1: had a couple modest successes. I started a company with
Speaker 1: some guys in twenty ten and we sold it in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, and then I did another one in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen that we sold in twenty twenty one. And I
Speaker 1: have been interested in crypto since the early twenty tens.
Speaker 1: The co founders of my first company were actually big,
Speaker 1: bigcoinners they started. They went on to start a company
Speaker 1: called Unchained Capital, which is multi sig custody for bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and that's what really sent me down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: And then another friend of mine here in Boston, which
Speaker 1: is where I live now, started a company called flip
Speaker 1: Side Crypto in twenty seventeen, and that's what really got
Speaker 1: me interested in the all chains. And then I also,
Speaker 1: in between bitcoin and alts, was exposed to ethereum during
Speaker 1: the mint. I was sitting next to a friend when
Speaker 1: he bought ethereum in the in the auction, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget it because I recall it. The price
Speaker 1: went up every some period of time I don't remember.
Speaker 1: You had to have bitcoin obviously to buy by ethan
Speaker 1: the auction, and I had bitcoin and everything, and the
Speaker 1: price had just doubled when I met up with him
Speaker 1: at his apartment and I was like, ah, you know,
Speaker 1: I missed, I missed the low price. And then this
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I don't know pennies and ethereum token,
Speaker 1: but it's incredible to see how the industry has come
Speaker 1: along from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing journey. Nick, you know, as a founder and
Speaker 2: you exited those companies and you sold them and so forth,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, coming across crypto, you know, how
Speaker 2: did you end up at? Why did you pick Solana
Speaker 2: you know as a place to go work? And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of blockchain projects out there. Maybe you can
Speaker 2: tell a little a bit about, you know, for the
Speaker 2: newcomers who are maybe watching and listen to this, what
Speaker 2: is Solona and why is why is it better in
Speaker 2: the others?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, so Solona is the fastest and cheapest, most
Speaker 1: scalable layer one blockchain and uh with with the best
Speaker 1: ecosystem too. I think that's really really important. It was
Speaker 1: it was really clear to me when I was in
Speaker 1: venture capital that the ecosystem that Solana had, you know,
Speaker 1: been building and it was still very early. This is
Speaker 1: like twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, was really sticky,
Speaker 1: and the people that were building the Salona ecosystem were
Speaker 1: there because you know, they really firmly believed that it
Speaker 1: was the best technology and that they had you know,
Speaker 1: the best approach to scalability. Of course, scalability on Salona
Speaker 1: is at the layer one. There's no fragmentation of liquidity,
Speaker 1: and that is really a key part of the Salona thesis,
Speaker 1: which is all assets, same chain, global market participants twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. And I think we even saw that,
Speaker 1: you know today, with the launch of Monad tokens on
Speaker 1: the Salona network at the same time as they they
Speaker 1: were live everywhere else. And you know, some people may say, well,
Speaker 1: isn't that's kind of weird. You know, Monad is an
Speaker 1: EVM chain. And the idea, though, is is is that
Speaker 1: Solana has been very consistent, you know, from its inception,
Speaker 1: which is all assets, one chain, you know, single liquidity venue,
Speaker 1: global art participants twenty for seven, all assets, I mean
Speaker 1: all assets, and it was just really clear to me
Speaker 1: that the people building on Solana were there because they
Speaker 1: really believed in technology, really believed in in in what
Speaker 1: totally rushed and the founders had built. And then as
Speaker 1: a user, if you had ever used any blockchain, you know,
Speaker 1: in that twenty twenty one twenty two time frame, and
Speaker 1: then you use Solana, you're just like, this is wicked fast,
Speaker 1: this is incredible. It's incredibly fast, it's incredibly cheap. The
Speaker 1: ux is just so good, and you know, it's funny, like,
Speaker 1: didn't in my opinion, take a genius to see that,
Speaker 1: but Solana has always been the underdolf, even then when
Speaker 1: it was so clear, you know, at least to me,
Speaker 1: that that Solana was building something that was really durable.
Speaker 1: I have friends asking me, you know what, you're going
Speaker 1: to the Salona Foundation, you know, And this again was
Speaker 1: summer of twenty three and FTX it happened six months ago.
Speaker 1: But it's incredible the people that came before me, and
Speaker 1: there were many people that were building on Salona much
Speaker 1: before I joined the foundation, And boy do I give
Speaker 1: them a lot of credit because they really, they really
Speaker 1: got it. And I'm just so glad that they exposed
Speaker 1: me to it, because it's just an incredible it's an
Speaker 1: incredible platform, it's an incredible ecosystem. It's an incredible place
Speaker 1: to build.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I remember years ago, Nick, I
Speaker 2: was testing Solana, looking to build like a social token.
Speaker 2: It had no value to it, and it was so
Speaker 2: fast and so easy. So I can certainly attest to that.
Speaker 2: So Nick, you know, you mentioned, you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a layer one and you have this ecosystem, you got
Speaker 2: retail participants, people are doing NFTs, meme coins, pumped out
Speaker 2: fund and all that, and you have institutions building on it.
Speaker 2: So my question is how is Solana a to handle
Speaker 2: the volume of transactions not just now but future as
Speaker 2: there's more demand and more people come on chain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And so the
Speaker 1: thing that makes Selana unique there's kind of two main things.
Speaker 1: One is parallel execution and this is what really helps
Speaker 1: with scalability. Currently, the theoretical throughput of the network is
Speaker 1: about sixty five thousand transactions per second. And the there's
Speaker 1: a new upgrade to the CAN. The new independent validator
Speaker 1: client is being built called fired Answer by Jump Crypto,
Speaker 1: and that has a million tps, which is more than
Speaker 1: enough to handle you know, just I mean a million
Speaker 1: can current transactions per second, which is more enough for
Speaker 1: the NASDAC of the blockchain, which was which was the
Speaker 1: founding vision of Solana. And then the second thing that's
Speaker 1: really important is the fees. Is how does Salona keep
Speaker 1: fees down even amidst you know this the scaling nature
Speaker 1: of the utilization of the network, and this is thanks
Speaker 1: to a concept called local fee markets. So on Ethereum
Speaker 1: and other ev chains, they have this idea of global
Speaker 1: fee markets. If there's a spike in demand, all of
Speaker 1: the transaction fees for that network go up. And this
Speaker 1: is what you saw in October during the flash crash,
Speaker 1: where you know, it was hundreds, if not thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars to transact on Ethereum, and then you know, in
Speaker 1: some cases many tens of dollars to transact on Layer twos,
Speaker 1: whereas on Solana the media and fee was still you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the sets and normally Slona is one
Speaker 1: thousandth of a cent per transaction. And that is really
Speaker 1: imperative because it's not just about having low fees, but
Speaker 1: it's having predictably low fees for institutions in particular that
Speaker 1: need to know they need to be able to budget
Speaker 1: for you know, what things are going to cost, to
Speaker 1: know what they should charge for various products that they're
Speaker 1: building on the blockchain.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Now you being head of institutional right grow
Speaker 2: that is I'm curious, what are institutions building on slaoner
Speaker 2: they took organizing money market funds or toognizing other types
Speaker 2: of assets, and you know, what's what's the conversation been
Speaker 2: like over the past year, given the change in the
Speaker 2: regulatory environment and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's start with the change in the regulatory environment.
Speaker 1: I can't say enough how important the passage of the
Speaker 1: Genius Act bill was. Obviously, we have an incredibly blockchain
Speaker 1: forward president in Donald Trump, who's who's done all kinds
Speaker 1: of helpful things in the administrative branch, you know, the
Speaker 1: which he controls. But what I think was particularly exciting
Speaker 1: was that the legislative branch, in kind of a bipartisan action,
Speaker 1: passed the Genius Act, which which made stable coins something
Speaker 1: that everyone has very clear guidelines on which they can
Speaker 1: build on. And that has really led, I think, to
Speaker 1: an influx of institutional interest in the blockchain, and I
Speaker 1: think the Clarity Act will only continue to to accelerate that.
Speaker 1: But what are institutions doing on Solana? Well, you've got
Speaker 1: all sorts of different institutions doing different kinds of things.
Speaker 1: On the payment side, you've got the likes of Visa
Speaker 1: and MasterCard and PayPal and Stripe Square cash App recently
Speaker 1: also announced that they're using Solana PayPal on the tomization side.
Speaker 1: On the asset management, you've got Hamilton Lane Breb and
Speaker 1: Howard Apollo. On the private side, you've got you know,
Speaker 1: black Rock, Van Eck, Franklin Templeton Wellington and others. On
Speaker 1: the money fund side, you've got all sorts of commodities,
Speaker 1: you know, gold, wine, art, even whiskey and everything under
Speaker 1: the sun. You know, as as I mentioned when we
Speaker 1: started the podcast, all assets, same liquidity venue, global market
Speaker 1: that has spends twenty four seven. And so we're really
Speaker 1: working to bring institutions on Solana with all different kinds
Speaker 1: of assets. And then there's also so banks are building
Speaker 1: on Salona as well. You've got Societe General which has
Speaker 1: stable coin, fi Serve recently announced that they're building stable
Speaker 1: coins on Solana. And then you've got money transmitters like
Speaker 1: Western mean, who's who's building on Salona. So the institutional
Speaker 1: utilization of Solona really runs the gamut, and I think
Speaker 1: it's increasingly being seen as a place that institutions feel
Speaker 1: incredibly comfortable building and are are increasingly choosing Salona as
Speaker 1: a first chain or only chain that they're building on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible adoption. And you mentioned the most recent
Speaker 2: move was Western Union looking to launch their stable coin
Speaker 2: on Solana, which which is incredible. You know, when these
Speaker 2: institutions are using Solana, and this may be a question
Speaker 2: that goes for every blockchain, you know, how are they
Speaker 2: integrating it or plugging into solon. I'm curious about that
Speaker 2: and maybe technical where you know, it may go over
Speaker 2: the heads of some folks, but I'm curious, what is
Speaker 2: the step of hitting the ground running from a conversation
Speaker 2: to hitting the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I would say, you know, institutions take a
Speaker 1: few different approaches to how they build on the blockchain.
Speaker 1: It depends in part on you know, the level of
Speaker 1: investment that they're able to make and also kind of
Speaker 1: how technology, how comfortable they are with the new technologies.
Speaker 1: So some some institutions you know, want to recruit and
Speaker 1: and or train you know, current engineers that they have
Speaker 1: and and have them you know, do the build eternally.
Speaker 1: And then others, you know, might look to a partner,
Speaker 1: like a tokenization partner, like on the stable point side
Speaker 1: that could be a Circle or a Paxos or somebody
Speaker 1: like that. Or on the tokenization side for real world
Speaker 1: assets that could be you know, Securitized or Republic or
Speaker 1: alpha Ledge or Sentrifuge or or somebody like that. And
Speaker 1: it really depends on how quickly they want to move,
Speaker 1: you know, do they want to build it in the house.
Speaker 1: Do they want to maintain it in house? But but
Speaker 1: I think that increasingly institutions are saying we have to
Speaker 1: have this capability, we have to be on chain. And
Speaker 1: that's really exciting to see because once these guys move,
Speaker 1: they don't move fast, but once they move, they move
Speaker 1: with size.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, you mentioned earlier upgrades such as fire Dancer.
Speaker 2: Correct me if I'm wrong. Is that live or is
Speaker 2: that in the works?
Speaker 1: So fire Dancer is live partially on Maine. There's also
Speaker 1: different versions of it that are live and being tested.
Speaker 1: Fire Dancer will be I think fully live hopefully sometime
Speaker 1: next year. I'm sure we'll get an update on that
Speaker 1: next month in Abu Dhabi at our big conference Breakpoint, Tony,
Speaker 1: I hope you're joining us and others listeners. We'd love
Speaker 1: to see you in Abu Dhabi. Lots of alpha will
Speaker 1: be shared at Breakpoint, as it always is.
Speaker 2: That's exciting. We'll talk offline about that. I would love
Speaker 2: to attend. You know, what are you and the team
Speaker 2: you know? As far as your vision board, so to speak,
Speaker 2: for twenty thirty, let's say five years from now, what's
Speaker 2: Salon I may look like. What do the adoption of
Speaker 2: retail applications, but also institutions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think Salona is powering the financial Internet
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty, and you may or may not even
Speaker 1: know that it is doing that. Right as a user,
Speaker 1: we want applications built on Solana to be as fast
Speaker 1: and performant as any other application, and I think you're
Speaker 1: seeing that increasingly, where you know, people will use a
Speaker 1: dex or they'll use you know, per peer, you know,
Speaker 1: payments app and they're just amazed that it's even you know,
Speaker 1: blockchain underneath, because it just feels so fast, almost instantaneous.
Speaker 1: And currently settlement for a transaction on Solon it's about
Speaker 1: four hundred milliseconds, but there's a new technology and other
Speaker 1: new technology being built called out and Glow, which will
Speaker 1: reduce that to about one hundred fifty milliseconds. And the
Speaker 1: reason that is so important is two hundred milliseconds is
Speaker 1: the point at which a human feels something is generally instantaneous.
Speaker 1: So we're going from something that's already really really fast
Speaker 1: to something that to the human eye will appear as
Speaker 1: nearly instantaneous. And you know, that's that's really exciting. And
Speaker 1: I think twenty thirty, you know, virtually every financial application
Speaker 1: on the Internet will be powered on Solana.
Speaker 2: So on that note, Nick, the transition for many companies
Speaker 2: from Web two to Web three, it's in the progress,
Speaker 2: right and there's still people who are skeptics. They're still
Speaker 2: on the fence. So I'm curious what your strategy is
Speaker 2: to approach some of these companies, you know, like the
Speaker 2: Googles and the facebooks and and other you know, companies
Speaker 2: that are running primarily Web two. And to your point,
Speaker 2: you know, eventually people won't know Solona is powering the
Speaker 2: back end, just that it works right at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, the average Joe and Jane. So I'm curious,
Speaker 2: how are you. I don't know if you can reveal this,
Speaker 2: but what's your pitch to these folks, Like, Hey, you
Speaker 2: need to get on here. This is this is what's happening.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily you have to advertise it to the end consumer,
Speaker 2: but you have to build it into your background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it's it's really simple. If you
Speaker 1: are a large institution, you wanted to be early in
Speaker 1: the cloud, you wanted to be early in mobile, you
Speaker 1: wanted to be early in social and now I think
Speaker 1: you want to be early in blockchain, and I think
Speaker 1: it is still early. You know, if you look at
Speaker 1: who accrued, you know, market share, Aws, Cloud, you know Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know social and then mobile, Apple and Google. Right,
Speaker 1: and you want to be early in blockchain? I think
Speaker 1: you know the visas, the paypals, the squares, you know,
Speaker 1: the Western unions, the black Rocks, the Franklin Timpletons. These
Speaker 1: folks that are building on the blockchain. Now you'll see
Speaker 1: them really I think benefit from that in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, their their market performance over the coming years.
Speaker 2: And then certainly payments has been something that's really been
Speaker 2: at the forefront of innovation when it comes to blockchain
Speaker 2: and so forth. Right, But what about tracking certain things
Speaker 2: on the blockchain or putting certain data and information? How
Speaker 2: where do you see that at? This is a hard
Speaker 2: question to answer because it's very open end. You know,
Speaker 2: different industries operated in different ways. But what do you
Speaker 2: see folks looking at beyond payments to do other things
Speaker 2: like I don't know, supply chain management and things like that. Yeah, listen,
Speaker 2: I think I think blockchain has all sorts of really
Speaker 2: interesting use cases and I think you know, we've seen
Speaker 2: innovation and experimentation, you know, in lots of different utility
Speaker 2: of the blockchain. I think where it's got unequivocally clear
Speaker 2: product market fit is for financial rails. Right.
Speaker 1: We've seen this with stable coins. There's now three hundred
Speaker 1: plus billion dollars of stable coins on chain. We've seen
Speaker 1: this with art of u A. There's now thirty billion
Speaker 1: plus in art of vua on chain. And these these
Speaker 1: numbers are growing extraordinarily. I'm sure we'll get to a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars some stable points next year and one hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars of our w A. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where there's unequivocally clear a product our g iFIT and
Speaker 1: why you're seeing you know, financial institutions in particular, you know,
Speaker 1: coming coming to the blockchain very very quickly.
Speaker 2: Now institutions they very much care about security and privacy,
Speaker 2: right and not having certain data out there to the
Speaker 2: open and in a while. So how does Solana meet
Speaker 2: that need?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, so there's kind of two ways. One there's
Speaker 1: the protocol itself and then there's third party applications built
Speaker 1: on top of the protocol. Okay, so the protocol itself, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's a token program that was released last year
Speaker 1: called Token extensions and token extensions has UH the ability
Speaker 1: to add various configuration settings to to tokens that are
Speaker 1: issued on in the Salon of blockchain. One of those
Speaker 1: is this idea of confidential balances, and PayPal actually uses
Speaker 1: this token extension for their p y u s D
Speaker 1: stable coin. So if I send you uh y u
Speaker 1: s d stable coin tony, other people won't be able
Speaker 1: to see how much I sent you. They'll see that
Speaker 1: I sent you as the stable coin, but they won't
Speaker 1: be able or they they'll see that wallet A sent
Speaker 1: wallet b p y u s D, but they won't
Speaker 1: be able to see the amount that was transferred. And
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of ways also to you know, make
Speaker 1: wallets difficult to identify as to who is the owner.
Speaker 1: So for example, like if you send something from Coinbase
Speaker 1: to your phantom wallet, and then something from your phantom
Speaker 1: wallet back to Coinbase, and and then you send that
Speaker 1: from Coinbase somewhere else, UH, you won't be able to
Speaker 1: really be able to track you know, who who all
Speaker 1: that was sent to if you're looking at the public ledger.
Speaker 1: So long story short is you can use kind of
Speaker 1: the existing capabilities of the Salon protocol you know, to
Speaker 1: do a lot of what you're talking about with respect
Speaker 1: to confidentiality and privacy. But then there's also third party
Speaker 1: providers like RCM and Umbra that are adding additional confidentiality
Speaker 1: and privacy at the application layer, and and so I
Speaker 1: think you'll see both. But you know, Salona is a public,
Speaker 1: permissionless blockchain, and so by nature, you know, all data is.
Speaker 2: Accessible via block explorer. Oh for sure, look to your point,
Speaker 2: you can see a transaction happen, but you may not
Speaker 2: know the details, right right, Yeah, talk to us a
Speaker 2: bit about bridging to let's say, private chains, because we
Speaker 2: see some of these institutions they have their wall garden
Speaker 2: permission private blockchains, but they want to communicate with public blockchains.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing on that front? And is it
Speaker 2: easy for them to plug into salonim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean there's an number of bridges that
Speaker 1: connect to private blockchains and public blockchains. I think among
Speaker 1: them are you know, chain link, wormhole, I believe, uh,
Speaker 1: layer zero as well. So for example, if you're looking
Speaker 1: to connect you know, JP Morgan connects us to Solana
Speaker 1: or to another public blockchain like base, you can use
Speaker 1: something like chain link to do that. Of course, the
Speaker 1: private blockchain needs to allow the data to be passed,
Speaker 1: you know, because that's the whole idea they control, you know,
Speaker 1: their their networks. But I think you are going to
Speaker 1: see an increasing move towards interoperability. What what I'm hearing
Speaker 1: is institutions, you know, ultimately want to settle on public
Speaker 1: blockchains and that's where the liquidity is. And so I
Speaker 1: think I think that's, you know, one of the many
Speaker 1: reasons you're going to see more institutions come to Solana Nick.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you sure these thoughts, but it's
Speaker 2: amazing to see at in for the ward is capitulation.
Speaker 2: But many of these institutions, they tried to bypass the
Speaker 2: public blockchains for years, build their own version, you know.
Speaker 2: JP Morgan did a private version of etherorem Quorum or
Speaker 2: whatever they call it. But now they realize, to your point,
Speaker 2: the liquidities on the public blockchains and they want to
Speaker 2: settle it there.
Speaker 1: Well. So, I in fairness to the institutions that were
Speaker 1: building on private blockchains, I think it was as much
Speaker 1: because of the lack of regulatory clarity. You know, until
Speaker 1: January twentieth of this year, crypto was a four letter
Speaker 1: word in the United States, and you know, that has
Speaker 1: been just an absolute sea change in you know, where
Speaker 1: what institutions can do. You know, in the United States
Speaker 1: they could do things you know, in other markets, in
Speaker 1: Switzerland and Singapore and and and and in some other
Speaker 1: markets as well where there where there were more friendly regulators,
Speaker 1: but in the US they really couldn't. And and many
Speaker 1: of the institutions that are global, of course are also
Speaker 1: UH in many cases have a US presence, and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to, you know, create any issues with the
Speaker 1: SEC or OCC or whoever their regulators were. But now
Speaker 1: that that they you know, have a green light, you know,
Speaker 1: the cars are absolutely racing around the track to build
Speaker 1: on public blockchains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing to see how things have changed on
Speaker 2: that front. Now there's been a lot of demand for
Speaker 2: Solona as an asset for ETPs as well as digital
Speaker 2: asset treasury companies. Tell us a bit about those products
Speaker 2: that are being going live and how you've been interacting
Speaker 2: with those folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's another really exciting development that again, you know,
Speaker 1: I think was really made possible this year thanks to
Speaker 1: friendlier regulation, UH specifically the SEC in in in that instance.
Speaker 1: So the way that I look at it is the
Speaker 1: ETFs or ways for people to access the soul token
Speaker 1: pass and dat's are a way for people to access
Speaker 1: UH this oul token, you know, in more of an
Speaker 1: actively managed vehicle, and so on the ETF side, UH
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago the first ones came out
Speaker 1: for Solana. Bit Wise and Grayscale were the first two
Speaker 1: to launch with staking, and then a number followed van K,
Speaker 1: Canary and Fidelity UH just this past week, and there's
Speaker 1: a few others that are filed I believe Franklin, Templeton
Speaker 1: and Vesco maybe some others. And then on the DAT side,
Speaker 1: Forward Industries raised one point sixty five billion dollars to
Speaker 1: deploy into Solana and then into DeFi Strategies, and there's
Speaker 1: a number of other dats as well. The Salona Company
Speaker 1: sold me Upex, DeFi dev sold Strategies and and others,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think it's great that there's all
Speaker 1: these teams now that are in large institutions like Fidelity
Speaker 1: and and and and n K and and b guys
Speaker 1: that are out there really educating the market about h Solana,
Speaker 1: and I think that will only bring more and more
Speaker 1: people into the Salona ecosystem. You know, if they invest
Speaker 1: in Solana and they haven't used the blockchain, maybe that'll
Speaker 1: drive them to you know, download a fine and wallet,
Speaker 1: try it out and really see how incredible it is,
Speaker 1: you know, to use Solana.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. Those are great on ramps. Great,
Speaker 2: uh you know, way for folks that dip their their
Speaker 2: toes in the water, right and before they plunge in.
Speaker 2: And I've heard, you know, from a few folks anecdotally
Speaker 2: that you know, who have bought let's say ETFs and
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, I want to go see if I
Speaker 2: can set up a wallet and do some cool things
Speaker 2: defy you know, any any type of Web three activity
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, by the way, if you want to mention
Speaker 1: that since the first Salona ETFs went live a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, they have seen inflows every single trade and
Speaker 1: day since. So while Bitcoin and ethereum have had outflows
Speaker 1: to the tunes of billions of dollars, Solana has seen
Speaker 1: nothing but inflows that I think it really shows the
Speaker 1: demand and interest in Solana, which is really exciting to see.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, yeah. I've been tracking some of the et
Speaker 2: inflows and you know, my friends a bit wise looking
Speaker 2: at b Soul and all that. So, yeah, it's really exciting.
Speaker 2: What's on your role map that you can share. I
Speaker 2: know some things might be on the wrap, but I'm
Speaker 2: curious what you got, you know, maybe twenty twenty six
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So one of the things that I say all
Speaker 1: the time is it's it's you know, Solana has been
Speaker 1: true to the same North Star vision since inception, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, all assets trading twenty four to seven globally
Speaker 1: anybody can can trade in a single liquidity venue. And
Speaker 1: and so we're just going to keep doing it. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna keep doing it. You're gonna see more assets,
Speaker 1: You've got to see more applications, You're going to see
Speaker 1: more tokens, and and we're going to continue to attract
Speaker 1: you know, the best founders and builders and institutions in
Speaker 1: the world to build on Solana such that you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, and twenty thirty
Speaker 1: and beyond, you know, there'll be more assets, more liquidity,
Speaker 1: more counter parties for you to build with together in
Speaker 1: the salon of ecosystem.
Speaker 2: So Nick, you know, it's amazing to see the adoption
Speaker 2: of Solana and all the things that are happening. And
Speaker 2: you know, in regards to the market structure building, I
Speaker 2: think you alluded to it earlier. Do you foresee that
Speaker 2: once that is passed into law there may be an
Speaker 2: explosion of innovation and building on slana that some people
Speaker 2: might still be on the sidelines waiting for that clarity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I think every piece of legislation
Speaker 1: that that moves crypto in the blockchain, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of further into acceptance, into general acceptance is better. But
Speaker 1: I think we also have a lot to work with
Speaker 1: even if Clarity Act isn't passed. So I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the big puzzle pieces are in place, you know,
Speaker 1: thanks to the Trump administration for institutions to build on
Speaker 1: the blockchain. Just this past week, those who see shed
Speaker 1: light on how babies can hold you know, small amounts
Speaker 1: of tokens to you know, make transactions on the blockchain,
Speaker 1: And I think that's great. And so I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna continue to see you know, administrative action to help
Speaker 1: clarify what institutions and others can do on the blockchain,
Speaker 1: even the absence of the Clarity Act. Legislation. But I do,
Speaker 1: of course hope we see the clarity acts. As you know,
Speaker 1: more legislation provides even clearer guidelines and rules and a
Speaker 1: level playing field for everyone to build on. And anything
Speaker 1: that happens here domestically in the United States drives innovation
Speaker 1: everywhere else in the world forward. So, you know, really
Speaker 1: exciting to see that the US is now leading innovation
Speaker 1: on blockchain versus you know, making it difficult for builders
Speaker 1: to to grow their companies on the blockchain.
Speaker 2: Now we're seeing blockchain is starting to penetrate different industries
Speaker 2: and aspects of life. And I'm curious, what do you
Speaker 2: guys see down the line. And this is a hard
Speaker 2: question to answer, right, you know, is it the gaming world,
Speaker 2: is it social media? I don't know what that may be.
Speaker 2: But what do you think might be the next driver
Speaker 2: of adoption and building?
Speaker 1: I mean barely scratching the surface in terms of like
Speaker 1: the the use case for you know, the Internet, capital markets,
Speaker 1: for you know, financial assets on chain today, and so
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, really widening, widening the wedge
Speaker 1: that we have there. You know, there's just so much
Speaker 1: more to go. Like I said, there's only thirty billion
Speaker 1: of RWA on chain. There's something like three plus trillion
Speaker 1: dollars of investable assets maybe more on Earth. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about one percent penetration at most today, and so
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we're going to see a lot
Speaker 1: more of that as well as other use cases too.
Speaker 1: But I think that where there's clear product market fit,
Speaker 1: you'll see more and more people come in and build
Speaker 1: that out further such that, you know, over the next
Speaker 1: few years, I really think you'll be able to do
Speaker 1: pretty much any financial transaction of any kind on Solana.
Speaker 1: You could pretty much do that already, but I think
Speaker 1: you'll you'll really be able to do that increasingly over
Speaker 1: the next few years.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Nick, I gotta ask you about the market, man,
Speaker 2: it's been brutal. We've been in a pretty big correction
Speaker 2: and everybody is getting a little bit dismade. What is
Speaker 2: your personal outlook is have we topped out? I know,
Speaker 2: you know you're a builder, so long term this is
Speaker 2: this is a blimp right on the on the screen here,
Speaker 2: But you know, what would you say, are we topped
Speaker 2: out or there's more to go? In twenty twenty six?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a permeable Tony I'm always bullish. I
Speaker 1: think I think we're so early, it's just crazy. So
Speaker 1: you know, I I try not to pay attention to
Speaker 1: short term movements in in in the market, and and
Speaker 1: just look at, you know, where we are today versus
Speaker 1: where we were a few years ago, versus where I
Speaker 1: think we'll be, you know, in in the next few years.
Speaker 1: And I think we're gonna be higher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like, you know, crypto is certainly following
Speaker 2: the liquidity cycle as kind of like all you know,
Speaker 2: assets on the macro and I guess we just got
Speaker 2: to be patient. But the building continues that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of great stuff on the horizon. You know, there
Speaker 2: was a question I wanted to ask in it is
Speaker 2: escaping me? Okay, here we go. I'm curious if anyone
Speaker 2: is building let's say that digital identity uh on Solana
Speaker 2: that you can share. I know, some things may be
Speaker 2: on the tops.
Speaker 1: So there there there is an initiative called the Solana
Speaker 1: Attestation Service, which makes it really easy for folks to
Speaker 1: connect identity, you know, to their projects on Solana. And
Speaker 1: I believe if you googles on at testation service, there's
Speaker 1: a landing page on Salona dot com where you can
Speaker 1: learn more about that.
Speaker 2: Okay, got it? Yeah, because you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things one of the pain points I experienced, and I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people, it's impersonations online and not
Speaker 2: being able to have blockchain verified social profiles. And you've
Speaker 2: got scammers they create one hundred versions of you and
Speaker 2: messaging people trying to scam people. But also, if I
Speaker 2: can have my digital identity all in one app, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's interoppable everywhere, that would make my life
Speaker 2: a lot easier and I'm sure many people as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we'll get going in that direction.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, as things progress there, I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to have you back on to talk about it.
Speaker 1: We should have one of my engineering colleagues who can
Speaker 1: share all the ins and outs of it.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Perfect, So Nick, got some wrap up questions here
Speaker 2: for you. First, if you could create your own metaverse,
Speaker 2: will the theme be so I'm a big tennis player
Speaker 2: and I this was actually pretty cool back in the
Speaker 2: you know, when NFTs were really popping. The Australian Open,
Speaker 2: which is the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the
Speaker 2: calendar year. It's in January.
Speaker 1: You could buy an NFT for the Australian Open, which
Speaker 1: was a square of the tennis court and if the
Speaker 1: last point of the match fell on your square, they
Speaker 1: would send you the ball. But they had a watching
Speaker 1: party for the Australian Open for NFT holders in the metaphorse.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember which metaverse project it was, if
Speaker 1: it was a sandbox or another one, but I did it,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was kind of cool. So yeah,
Speaker 1: tennis and the metaverse. Nice rapid fire questions, favorite food,
Speaker 1: favorite food avocado, favorite musician or band Pearl Jam, favorite
Speaker 1: movie clue, favorite book Snow Leopard by Peter Matheson.
Speaker 2: And when you're not working at the Salona Foundation, what
Speaker 2: are you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: I'm playing tennis or with my kids.
Speaker 2: Nice Nick, great stuff, pleasure chatting with you. I'm looking
Speaker 2: forward to the future. Up bates, Aron Salana, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining me. Thanks so much for having me.