Solana is actively transforming recently, aiming to shift from the Memecoin haven to becoming Wall Street's new darling. Through collaborations with R3 and opening a headquarters in New York, it seeks to attract more institutional adoption, but still faces strong challenges from Ethereum and others. This article is sourced from a piece written by SolEasy Labs, organized, translated, and authored by PANews. (Background: Is Solana's prosperity merely superficial? Is the recent token price increase solely due to behind-the-scenes manipulation, and has the on-chain cycle reached its end?) (Supplementary Background: Solana's founder criticized Meme Coins NFTs as 'all digital garbage,' leading to community conflicts: but they account for 62% of the income.) In the past few weeks, this sixth-largest blockchain network, with a market value of $82 billion, has undergone a series of initiatives to expand its business beyond cryptocurrency speculators and popular tokens. In May, the Solana Foundation reached a tokenization agreement with global software group R3. R3 manages tokenized assets worth $10 billion for traditional financial giants such as Euroclear, HSBC, and Bank of America. Over the past two months, three publicly traded companies have purchased millions of dollars worth of SOL and included it on their balance sheets, reflecting Michael Saylor's Bitcoin treasury strategy. The development team behind Solana, Solana Labs, even opened a luxurious new headquarters named 'Skyline' in downtown Manhattan. For an industry proud of remote work and anonymity, establishing a physical base seems to contradict the spirit of DeFi, but for some developers, it represents a 'fresh current.' 'Having an office building is a great initiative because everyone is there,' said CrunchDAO founder Jean Herelle. 'You can spend a week in New York and go to that building to directly ask questions of Solana's technical team.' He added that members of the nonprofit organization managing the network, the Solana Foundation, will also work in the building. Moreover, this center sets the tone for the next steps in development by showcasing that Solana Labs is unashamed to borrow strategies from traditional businesses. Solana has been known for providing ultra-fast transaction services, with transaction costs being only a fraction of its competitor Ethereum. According to Solscan data, in the past 24 hours, Solana processed over 4,000 transactions per second, with an average cost of just 0.5 cents. 'Using this technology for Memecoins is too limited; the market needs to be much larger,' Herelle said. 'I call it institutional-grade scale. A black hole. Trillions of dollars.' Trading Strategy Herelle switched from Ethereum to Solana in 2024, citing speed as the key reason for CrunchDAO's transition. CrunchDAO uses machine learning to extract trends from blockchain activity, which is crucial for financial institutions looking to build trading strategies or products for clients. Thanks to the networking efforts of the Solana Labs team, he was able to meet with executives from Franklin Templeton and BlackRock at the Skyline office. However, whether Solana can successfully transform into the blockchain of choice for financial companies remains to be seen. 'I want to see if they can do it; it's like the speculative market trying to transform into banking,' said John Nahas, Chief Business Officer of competitor Layer 1 Avalanche, during an interview with DL News in April. Analysts at Standard Chartered stated in May that as the Memecoin speculative frenzy fades, Solana's price performance will continue to languish. 'We may have indeed passed the peak period for Memecoins,' wrote Geoff Kendrick, 'so we expect Solana to lag behind Ethereum in performance over the next two to three years before catching up.' Dominance of Ethereum Meanwhile, the second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, still far outpaces Solana in almost all institutional metrics, including stablecoin issuance, tokenized funds, and DeFi activity. According to DefiLlama data, Ethereum holds nearly two-thirds of the $247 billion DeFi space, while Solana accounts for only 9%. However, the Solana Foundation has proven to be a nimble organization, quicker to seize trends than the more established Ethereum network. In April, Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital invested $50 million in a new staking SOL fund in Canada. Meanwhile, Apollo, which manages $785 billion in assets, launched a $1.5 billion diversified credit fund on the Solana network in May. SOL Strategies is the largest corporate holder of SOL, whose stock traded at about 5 cents in 2024 but has skyrocketed 3,900% and is now included in two cryptocurrency asset ETFs under Invesco. Washington Layout 'We have transitioned from the low-priced stock domain to being allocated in some of the most powerful asset management ETFs, which have strict requirements for who can acquire shares,' SOL Strategies CEO Leah Wald told DL News. Meanwhile, supporters are strengthening Solana's influence in Washington, as Congress and the Trump administration are establishing a regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency asset industry. In March, well-known cryptocurrency asset lobbyists established the Solana Policy Institute, a lobbying group aimed at educating regulators about decentralized networks like Solana. 'Their goal is to have legislators think of Solana right after mentioning Bitcoin, viewing it as a distinct tier rather than lumping it with many other tokens, including Ethereum,' SkyBridge Capital partner John Darsie told DL News. Investors are optimistic about Solana's performance: over the past two years, SOL's price has surged by over 640%, while Ethereum has only risen by 45%. 'First mover advantage, then innovation, right?' said Michael Cahill, CEO of oracle developer Douro Labs, to DL News. 'Innovators need to disrupt at a faster pace; I think Solana has been very successful.' The Backbone of DeFi Despite facing a series of outages from 2020 to 2024, Solana has remained a key player in the core developments of the DeFi space. Serum was one of the first decentralized exchanges launched on Solana in 2020, proving that on-chain exchanges can compete with centralized ones. However, with the control of Serum's smart contracts held by crypto...

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