Blockchains should refocus on their original purpose: finance, Solana Foundation President Lily Liu wrote on Thursday, rejecting years of narratives that attempted to frame the technology as a widespread replacement for the modern Internet.
“Blockchains have always been and always will be technology for finance,” Liu wrote, describing financialization and open capital markets as the sector’s core value proposition.
Liu, who will speak at Consensus Hong Kong next week, was particularly dismissive of past efforts to push blockchains into games and into broad “web3” consumer narratives, calling them intellectually lazy and overly reliant on marketing rather than genuine market creation. He criticized the idea that simply putting existing applications on a blockchain, often under the motto “read, write, own,” would automatically generate value, arguing instead that meaningful adoption requires the creation of entirely new financial markets.
The comments come at a time when cryptocurrency prices have plummeted, with bitcoin, ether and other major tokens falling amid macroeconomic uncertainty and waning speculative demand. Despite the recession, institutional interest remains strong as traditional financial firms continue to explore tokenization, on-chain settlement, and payment pathways.
Liu’s comments also come as other industry leaders are narrowing their own views on blockchain’s usefulness. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently expressed his desire to double down on Ethereum’s Layer 1 scaling roadmap, diverting attention from an expanding Layer 2-centric approach that has dominated Ethereum’s strategy in recent years. The shift reflects the duplication of efforts across fragmented ecosystems to focus on usability and consistency.
Taken together, the comments highlight a broader recalibration taking place across the industry: As prices fall, industry leaders are emphasizing that the technology underpinning it all still has a purpose.
Read more: From ‘Ethereum peer’ to indie stars: How Vitalik Buterin’s latest turn is forcing layer 2s to grow
UPDATE (February 5, 2026, 16:38 UTC): Edit headline.
