【In-Depth Interpretation】Solana's (Unofficial) 2027 Roadmap was released today. It is called unofficial because this roadmap was not officially published by the Solana Foundation, but was co-authored by contributors from six organizations: Solana Labs, Anza, Jito Labs, DoubleZero, Drift, and Multicoin Capital, and was published by Anza, which is responsible for maintaining the Solana client. Therefore, this roadmap brings together Solana itself as well as its developers, project parties, and VCs, combining various perspectives. The fact that it was not officially released is likely to make it seem more decentralized and grassroots.
One of the most interesting aspects of this roadmap is that its title is "The Internet Capital Markets Roadmap," using the newly coined term Internet Capital Markets (ICM) to replace Solana's name. This clearly positions Solana and its ecosystem; while Ethereum is seen as the World Computer, Solana is positioned as the Internet Capital Market. Think about it.
It mentions that currently, the entire Solana ecosystem is integrating around a common vision, which is Application Controlled Execution (ACE). This allows smart contracts on Solana to autonomously control the execution time and order of their transactions. You might wonder, isn't this something that all public chains' validating nodes are doing? Yes, that's correct. Solana aims to transfer this responsibility from nodes to smart contracts.
The biggest advantage of this is that it can elevate the entire network's high performance and low latency to a new level, as it grants applications greater authority, allowing each application to manage itself without relying entirely on nodes. This reduces transaction conflicts across the network, such as front-running and sniping, enhancing transaction efficiency and fairness. Also, because smart contracts have greater authority, they can support more complex on-chain trading strategies, making operations like DEXs more efficient.
So, you can understand that the Internet Capital Markets (ICM) is Solana's latest vision narrative, while Application Controlled Execution (ACE) is Solana's latest technical narrative, and this technical narrative is entirely designed to serve the realization of the vision narrative.
To achieve this roadmap, it is divided into three phases: short-term, mid-term, and long-term.
The short-term involves collaborating with existing mechanisms, aiming to utilize them as much as possible, with a focus on Jito's Block Assembly Market (BAM), which is a function similar to ACE launched by Jito, and then coordinated with Anza, which maintains nodes, to enhance feasibility.
The mid-term is primarily undertaken by DoubleZero. It is quite interesting as it represents a physical infrastructure network within the Solana ecosystem, a high-performance fiber optic network that significantly boosts blockchain performance through physical means. Thus, DoubleZero provides hardware support for ACE.
The long-term is driven by projects across the entire Solana ecosystem, primarily aiming for Multi-Concurrent Leaders (MCL) to replace Single Leaders. In most PoS chains, a node is elected as a temporary single leader through random selection or voting to control transaction ordering. Since Solana has delegated the work of nodes to smart contracts, it also needs to further delegate authority from nodes.
Finally, the roadmap summarizes the Internet Capital Markets (ICM) as "Solana should have the most liquid market in the world, not the market with the largest trading volume." This statement subtly references Ethereum, indicating that Solana's positioning is aimed at retail investors pursuing high-frequency small transactions (TPS), rather than large investors pursuing low-frequency large transactions (TVL).
To emphasize, due to the abundance of mindless binary opinions on Twitter, this article is not about praising or criticizing anyone. However, to be factual, Solana's performance over the past few years has indeed been commendable. It seems that it hasn't faced downtime for quite a long time, and the entire Solana ecosystem feels very united with a clear goal. You can clearly sense from this roadmap that there are no flashy or superficial concepts; it is all about pragmatically solving problems.
Original roadmap link: https://t.co/x9jPwQetgn
cc @solana @SolanaFndn @calilyliu @ynonestop @anza_xyz @jito_sol @DriftProtocol @multicoincap @doublezero
