Original Title: "Exclusive Interview with Lily Liu, Chair of the Solana Foundation: Entering the Asia-Pacific Market at the Right Time, Solana May Have New Moves by the End of the Year."

Original Source: ForesightNews

From Wall Street to the crypto industry, from Bitcoin maximalists to the president of the Solana Foundation, who has undergone a greater transformation?

Perhaps Lily Liu herself couldn't explain it clearly. After entering the workplace in early 2005, she successively worked at top traditional financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, KKR, and HCA. Originally, she was following the traditional path of a typical elite, but she never expected to dramatically learn about and get involved in Bitcoin through the continuous recommendation of her friend and industry expert, Li Qiyuan.

Since then, as an "old gun" who started to get in touch with Bitcoin in 2013, Lily Liu has been in the cryptocurrency industry for a full decade, from exchanges (BTC China) to the earliest mining company in the United States, 21 Inc (which later changed its name to Earn.com and was acquired by Coinbase), and then to joining the public chain (Solana). She has always been at the intersection of top resources, feeling the most real changes in the market, while also observing the industry's tremendous changes. 

2013, "Bobby, you shouldn't play with Bitcoin."

In 2021, "The most attractive thing about Solana to me is that - I press it, and it happens."

These two paragraphs, from outside the circle to inside the circle, and from "BTC Maxi" to joining Solana, in retrospect, are both a turning point and an advantage - it links the old members of the crypto circle with the traditional elites in Silicon Valley, and gives more people a reason to re-examine Solana, undoubtedly bringing an undeniable potential variable to Solana.

During the turbulent times of FTX last year, the regulatory direction of the entire market also changed. Lily Liu decided to increase investment in the Chinese-speaking and Asia-Pacific markets in a timely manner. Solana also took a different step this year. On September 10, 2023, Foresight News had the honor of conducting an exclusive interview with Lily Liu. Here is a transcript of the interview for readers to enjoy.

From Wall Street to the Crypto Industry, from "BTC Maxi" to Solana

From Wall Street to the crypto industry, from "BTC Maxi" to joining Solana, in Lily Liu's eyes, "Solana offers a completely different choice", just as she expressed when answering why she is optimistic about Solana:

I press it, and it happens.

She believes that so far, only a few blockchain projects have both a strong community and technology, and Solana is one of them - providing a new growth model for decentralized ecosystems, rather than relying solely on traditional methods from Silicon Valley or the Web2 industry.

Foresight News: Hello Lily, it's great to have the opportunity to interview you. Firstly, could you please give a brief introduction of yourself? Secondly, I did some research and found out that you graduated from both Stanford and Harvard University, and had worked in top traditional companies such as Morgan Stanley, McKinsey and KKR. What led you to the blockchain industry and start your own business in this field?

Lily Liu: Thank you for the interview, ForesightNews. Hello to all the Chinese readers, I am Lily, and you can also call me by my Chinese name: Liu Yuanli. Although I was born in the United States, I have always had a strong connection to China and am proud of my Chinese cultural background. I joined the blockchain industry in 2013 and currently serve as the Chair of the Solana Foundation. My career began at Morgan Stanley's investment bank in Hong Kong, and my first full-time job was at McKinsey, working in New York and Beijing between approximately 2005 and 2008. Later, I participated in a private equity fund, KKR, mainly working in New York.

Through my work with KKR, I met the "Frist" family from Tennessee, USA (Foresight News note: The "Frist" family began creating one of the world's largest private chain medical institutions, HCA, in the 1960s). They also opened a private hospital in China, and I participated in their international standard hospital project in Cixi, Zhejiang Province, which has 500 beds. So, in fact, my first entrepreneurial experience was related to the medical industry rather than technology.

In 2013, I was still living in Shanghai and I had a good friend named Bobby Lee (Foresight News note: Li Qiyuan, co-founder of "Bitcoin China" and the brother of Litecoin founder Li Qiwei) who had a certain level of fame in the Bitcoin industry. Bobby Lee and I were both alumni of Stanford University and we became good friends while in Shanghai.

One day, Bobby Lee mentioned Bitcoin to me. At that time, my understanding of Bitcoin was still very shallow. I thought it might be related to money laundering or the drug market, and I even told him, "Bobby, you shouldn't play with Bitcoin." But he kept bringing it up, urging me not to ignore Bitcoin. It can be said that this was also the first time I felt a religious-like passion in the Bitcoin field.

At his repeated recommendation, I decided to seriously study Bitcoin. I read the Bitcoin whitepaper and studied for a period of time, gradually realizing that Bitcoin is very profound and interesting in terms of technology, theory, and decentralization concepts. At that time, in 2013 to 2014, there were only a few currencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin.

In 2014, I left the hospital and joined "Bitcoin China" (BTCC) founded by Bobby. After working at BTCC for about four to five months, I returned to the United States and met a person named Balaji S. Srinivasan who ran a mining company called 21 Inc. At that time, there were only a few mining companies in the United States, and 21 Inc was one of them. At that time, the market was gradually bearish, and many companies faced financial planning challenges. Balaji S. Srinivasan and I worked together to help 21 Inc alleviate financial pressure. Later, they changed their name to Earn.com and sold it to Coinbase in 2018.

During that time, I mainly focused on Bitcoin and was very interested in it because there weren't many other technological choices. Many applications and use cases were considered dreams, only discussed on Bitcointalk or in articles about the possibility of decentralized technology in the future. Bitcoin proved that a decentralized network can exist, but it cannot support more use cases. If you want to truly run some scenarios, it takes an hour to receive funds, which requires significant optimization compared to traditional financial systems.

Therefore, I believe that after the emergence of Ethereum, it has expanded the various use cases that can be achieved in the encryption field. However, Ethereum also has a problem. Although its transaction speed is faster than Bitcoin, it is not as fast as our traditional financial transactions. In fact, regardless of how the technology behind it works, the United States and China both have independent payment systems similar to PayPal and WeChat Pay, and these traditional payment methods still have advantages in terms of user experience.

Foresight News: What do you think is the biggest difference between this industry and traditional industries? How many rounds of bull and bear markets have you experienced, and what attracts you to continue building in this industry?

Lily Liu: I think the biggest difference is the culture of entrepreneurship. Traditional companies usually do not consider innovation or entrepreneurship as their core strengths, and their goals are usually not innovation or entrepreneurship. In contrast, the core culture of Silicon Valley is innovation and entrepreneurship.

I believe that blockchain is one of the most extreme industries in the technology field, because its ultimate goal is decentralization. Unlike the centralized Silicon Valley business model, blockchain has a very strong emphasis on decentralization. In a sense, it is somewhat like socialism and somewhat like capitalism, because it has a certain degree of control. This is why I am interested in the theory of blockchain - I believe it provides a different way of thinking about social choices.

For those who participated in the Bitcoin industry in 2013 and 2014, I believe that at least one (and possibly two) of the following three reasons drove them to participate, including the concept of blockchain, involvement in drug trading or money laundering, and technology.

For me, I am mainly interested in the concept of blockchain. At that time, if someone truly believed in the idea of decentralization, it was difficult to leave the cryptocurrency industry because it was hard to find another place that matched this culture and ideology. Therefore, I feel that I didn't have many other choices but to continue working in this field.

Why is Solana a good investment? "I press, it happens"

Foresight News: As a former BTC Maxi and early participant and contributor in the industry, what opportunity led you to discover Solana and later decide to join the Solana Foundation? What role does joining the Solana Foundation play in your career?

Lily Liu: I started using Solana in 2021, and the reason I am bullish on it is simple - when I press, it happens. This is an experience that we are already very familiar with in Web2 - you press a button and you immediately see the corresponding response, without having to consider whether the cost is one dollar or two dollars, it's almost free.

If blockchain cannot provide this user-friendly experience, then the large-scale application of blockchain is almost impossible.

In addition, since the rise of public chains in 2017 and 2018, many different blockchain projects have emerged. However, I believe that for a blockchain project to succeed, it needs to be very strong in two aspects: community and technology.

However, so far, only a few blockchain projects have both a strong community and technology. First, it must have a solid technical foundation and technical standards. Secondly, it needs to establish a complete ecosystem and attract developers.

Although there are currently many different blockchain projects, only about 4 to 5 projects perform well in this area. One is Bitcoin, another is Ethereum, the third is Solana, and there are also some potential projects such as Cosmos, Polkadot, or Near.

Although I think there are many different ideas in the blockchain industry, only a few projects have both the technology, culture, and ecosystem. In the past, in the scaling practice dominated by Ethereum, it was already assumed that transactions cannot be completely placed on the main chain. As a non-technical person, this challenge is very interesting to me - how to find some special growth patterns in a decentralized ecosystem. Solana provides a new growth model that is suitable for decentralized ecosystems, and this growth method does not rely on traditional methods of Silicon Valley or the Web2 industry.

Foresight News: What is the biggest commonality among your colleagues while working at the Solana Foundation? Is there anything or anyone that left a deep impression on you?

Lily Liu: I really like the working culture of the Solana Foundation, and I have had a pleasant cooperation with everyone. I also feel that most of my colleagues at the Solana Foundation truly believe in decentralization and are committed to executing it seriously, which is a core consideration in our work.

Many of the blockchain projects that emerged in 2017 and 2018 ultimately went in two directions: either enterprise blockchain or EVM compatibility. There were not many possibilities to establish a new independent technical system and community ecosystem.

If you want to truly do it, on one hand, you need to have the technology, and on the other hand, you also need to have such a belief.

Asia-Pacific + Europe and America, is a decentralized collaboration in macro sense

Lily Liu believes that the blockchain industry is only dominated by the Western market led by the United States and the Asia-Pacific market led by the Chinese-speaking region. Only these two major markets have strong developer communities and capital markets with sufficient funding support.

In addition, she also emphasized that the market may lean more towards the Asia-Pacific region, while the technology aspect may lean more towards the West. "Independent developers are the most core asset of blockchain," and in any case, the developer market is the most important.

Foresight News: We understand that you are a Chinese-American working and living in various cities in Asia for many years. You speak Chinese very well and even studied East Asian culture in college. From your perspective, what are the biggest characteristics of the Asia-Pacific market compared to Europe and the United States? What are the biggest advantages and disadvantages in the development process of Web3?

Lily Liu: I believe that there are two major markets in the blockchain industry, one is the Western blockchain market dominated by the United States, and the other is the Asian blockchain market dominated by the Chinese-speaking region. Only these two major markets have strong developer communities and capital markets with sufficient funding support.

The large market in the Chinese-speaking region is very, very important, despite many restrictions due to policy reasons at times, it has always been attractive. If compared, I think the large market in the West may be more focused on core technology, and many blockchain projects with deep development may be more inclined towards the West, such as Silicon Valley or Europe. However, in terms of the market, Asia may be stronger because Asia has a huge population, potential consumers, and plays a core role in the operation of exchanges. In fact, about 80% to 90% of trading volume is currently conducted through some exchanges in Asia.

In short, the market may be in the Asia-Pacific region, while the technology aspect may lean more towards the West. These two markets are not completely separated and still have a certain degree of integration. Of course, there are also cultural differences between these two markets.

If you communicate with some American projects, at least half of them may not have a deep understanding of the roles in the Asia-Pacific region. Therefore, in the blockchain industry, we need to understand more about the characteristics of each region. Different regions play different roles in international cooperation, and sometimes projects and markets in different regions are not even aware of their cooperation. This also reflects the decentralized collaboration in a broader geographical sense in Web3. Different nodes in the blockchain industry play different roles, and ultimately they collaborate with each other, even though their understanding of each other may not always be completely consistent.

We mentioned internally at Solana that more than 80% of the core trading volume of SOL is through some exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region. Some of our colleagues were very surprised, as they had never noticed or thought that this proportion would be so high.

Foresight News: We have observed that Solana is very active in the North American and European markets, with strong consensus among both developers and user groups. However, in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the Chinese-speaking areas, the previous exposure and activity were relatively limited. This year, we clearly feel that Solana's voice in this market is getting louder and more and more people are discussing Solana. Is this related to the Solana Foundation's own strategy change? What kind of role do you play in this transformation?

Lily Liu: I joined the Solana Foundation in 2021 and have been hoping for the opportunity to help Solana develop in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the past two years, many things have happened globally and in the cryptocurrency industry, and we have not found a suitable opportunity. So we have actually been thinking for a long time and waiting for a long time until the end of last year and the beginning of this year, when such an opportunity that can be given priority appeared. We have been closely following market changes, and the changes in Hong Kong's policies have made us feel that there seems to be some signs of openness in the Chinese-speaking market again.

We have already established a relatively good ecosystem in the Chinese-speaking region in the past, but in the past few years, due to the impact of some macro environment factors, as well as the FTX incident at the end of last year, we decided to increase our investment in the Chinese-speaking and Asia-Pacific regions starting from February and March this year.

Foresight News: How do you view the importance of the Asia-Pacific market for the long-term development of Solana?

Lily Liu: Very important. We spent two years in India building a growth strategy focused on developers, and we are also expanding our international market in Europe, especially in Germany and the UK. Although these markets are important, they are not as comprehensive and balanced as the Asia-Pacific region, which has both developer resources and a foundation for capital market development.

Our internal framework includes the Labor Market and Capital Market as two key indicators for evaluation.

The labor market mainly refers to the developer market, because in the blockchain field, the most core asset is independent developers, so the developer market is always the most important no matter what.

However, there are many developer markets around the world, such as Silicon Valley, New York, India, and Germany, but few have both labor market characteristics and a bias towards capital markets.

Only two markets have both a strong labor market and capital market, one is the US market, and the other is the Chinese-speaking market.

Solana is preparing some killer moves

On the one hand, Solana continues to focus on hackathons and developer ecosystems, while on the other hand, Solana has many innovations in progress that are expected to begin to show results by the end of this year or early next year.

Foresight News: According to data from the past six months, Solana has seen significant recovery in both technological advancements and TVL improvements. From your perspective, what has been the biggest change for Solana in the past six months? What is the core reason for Solana's strong resilience in its ecosystem?

Another aspect is the exposure of Solana in the media in the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps six months ago, or even a year ago, we probably wouldn't have conducted such an interview because Solana had relatively little exposure in the media.  

Lily Liu: I think the main focus is on developers, for example, earlier this month we launched a new hackathon called "Solana Hyperdrive".

Foresight News: There have been significant changes in the current competition landscape of public chains compared to a year ago. Layer2 projects are developing rapidly, and the EVM ecosystem has a strong first-mover advantage. New public chain projects are also emerging constantly. High-performance narratives seem to be less attractive. How do you view the current competition? In such a competitive environment, what measures is Solana taking in terms of positioning and strategy adjustments? In which specific areas is Solana increasing investment and attention?

Lily Liu: First of all, let's talk about why we need a high-performance public chain. I think this is a self-evident question. The reason why I am interested in Solana is because I hope that blockchain can realize various use cases, many of which require high performance.

We are now accustomed to the Ethereum mainnet, a bit like how we used to connect to the internet with a 56K modem. Over twenty years ago, we had to connect through a telephone line and it could take half an hour to download a song. It's similar to the state we are in now when using blockchain, where performance issues must be addressed.

The second question is about what kind of solution can achieve the best user experience. I think Layer2 is suitable for Ethereum and is a good solution, but it still has some problems, just like when broadband Internet appeared, we no longer need to install new modules every time we use different applications.

As for the development of Solana, there will be some new progress by the end of this year or early next year. I believe that some of the important innovations include "Firedancer", which can achieve 1 million TPS during internal testing, and may reach 100,000 TPS in actual operation, which can already meet the needs of high-frequency trading applications.

Moreover, all of these are implemented on the Solana main chain. From a technical perspective, this will also make Solana another blockchain with multiple completely independent validator clients outside of Ethereum.

Another technological innovation is State Compression, which was launched in the first half of this year. Its most obvious effect is the reduction of NFT costs.

Now, if you want to mint 100,000 NFTs on Solana, it only costs $100, while on Ethereum it could cost $500,000. This difference is huge. It's not just a cost issue, but more importantly, by reducing costs, performance is no longer just performance, it also expands the space for innovation.

If creating 100,000 NFTs only costs $100, then NFTs can evolve from an application to an infrastructure, which means that NFTs can be used for more use cases.

For example, you can include NFT as part of a wallet, which was previously impossible. Therefore, Solana's performance and cost reduction can make NFT a basic infrastructure, thereby expanding its application scope.

In short, state compression is a significant technological advancement this year, which reduces the cost of using blockchain and expands the space for innovation. It helps to apply blockchain technology more widely in various fields.

Bear market is the best time for Builder

We usually divide our time into two parts, half for development and project training, and the other half for community activation and collaboration among developers. This helps encourage creative collisions between independent developers and provides them with a beneficial environment to explore interesting ideas together. This approach also promotes wider community interaction and cooperation.

Foresight News: What advice can be given to Builders in the industry?

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