While the entire crypto market is still debating 'the next breakout protocol' in the DeFi space, the keen 'smart money' has quietly shifted — they are no longer chasing superficial short-term hotspots, but have anchored on the underlying infrastructure that supports all innovations. In this migration of funds 'from protocols to foundations', Solana (SOL) is becoming a core destination, while ecological projects like Solayer are merely the 'first piece of the puzzle' revealing SOL's long-term value.
If you are still struggling with 'which new DeFi protocol can double,' perhaps it's time to consider a more fundamental question: What do all DeFi innovations, game implementations, and infrastructure upgrades rely on? The answer is simple — a sufficiently fast, cheap, and stable underlying public chain. And Solana is currently one of the ecosystems that best meets these needs, which is the core logic behind smart money continuously accumulating SOL.
Take the recently highly publicized Solayer project, which is doing far more than just 'issuing a new token.' Its core innovation lies in transforming 'idle staked SOL' (sSOL) into a 'dynamic liquidity engine': in the past, when users staked SOL, the assets entered a 'locked state,' passively waiting for staking rewards; but Solayer, through smart contract design, allows sSOL to participate in DeFi lending, liquidity mining, cross-chain exchanges, and other scenarios, essentially making 'sleeping capital' flow again. Data shows that within just two weeks of Solayer's launch, it attracted over 8,000 SOL staked, and the released liquidity drove a 47% increase in daily trading volume on a certain DEX on the Solana chain — behind this is fundamentally supported by Solana network’s 'high scalability' and 'low gas fees': Solana can process over 4,000 transactions per second, with an average gas fee of only $0.0002 per transaction, making scenarios for 'secondary utilization of staked assets' feasible, while on other public chains, this would either be unachievable due to congestion or result in users not making a profit due to high fees.
More critically, the relationship between Solayer and Solana is not a simple dependency of 'project and public chain,' but a deeply bonded 'coexistence and mutual prosperity.' The success of Solayer relies on the health of the Solana network — if the Solana ecosystem has few active users and low transaction efficiency, then no matter how excellent the liquidity strategy is, it will be useless; conversely, Solayer's implementation also creates 'new value' for Solana: it extends the 'utility' of SOL from 'staking rewards' to 'liquidity appreciation,' attracting more users to transfer external assets into the Solana ecosystem, forming a positive cycle of 'increased users → ecological prosperity → SOL demand increase.'
This is like the relationship between 'cars and fuel': Solayer is a high-performance car, while SOL is the core fuel that makes it run — without fuel, even the most advanced car is just a pile of scrap metal; the stronger the demand for fuel, the more cars are on the road, and the higher the value of the entire transportation network. In the Solana ecosystem, this logic holds true as well:
When a new DeFi protocol goes live on Solana, it requires SOL as gas fees to process transactions, users need to hold SOL to participate in governance, and even use SOL as collateral;
When a Web3 game chooses to land on Solana, the account creation, item trading, and on-chain interactions of millions of players will consume SOL's ecological resources, while the issuance and circulation of the game tokens will also indirectly drive the demand for SOL.
When a cross-chain infrastructure connects to Solana, it requires SOL as one of the core assets of the 'cross-chain bridge' to connect the liquidity of different ecosystems — the more such facilities there are, the greater SOL's 'cross-chain value.'
For investors, buying SOL essentially means buying 'the growth options of the entire Solana ecosystem,' rather than a short-term gamble on a single project. For instance, in 2023, the DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) in the Solana ecosystem grew from $3 billion to $13 billion, while the SOL price surged from $8 to $210, an increase of over 25 times; in the first half of 2024, the number of active wallets on the Solana chain grew by 62%, with 37 new game projects added, and the SOL price also rose from $120 to $240 — behind these data lies the inevitable logic of 'ecological prosperity → SOL demand increase → value growth.' You don’t need to accurately judge 'who the next Solayer is,' you just need to see the fact that 'the Solana ecosystem is continuously expanding' to share in the long-term dividends of the underlying infrastructure.
For traders, the advantage of SOL lies in 'higher certainty trend opportunities.' Compared to the characteristics of new protocol tokens that are 'volatile, with high risks of crashing to zero,' the price drivers of SOL are more stable: the more projects there are in the ecosystem, the more users there are, and the higher the trading volume, the more rigid the demand for SOL becomes. For instance, the weekly trading volume of the NFT market on the Solana chain recently surpassed $500 million, driving a net inflow of over $120 million into SOL; this 'ecosystem data → capital inflow → price increase' transmission path is more reliable than mere 'concept hype,' and is more suitable for grasping medium to long-term trends.
For ecosystem builders, holding SOL is even more of a 'ticket to participate in the game.' To deploy smart contracts on Solana, SOL is needed to pay deployment fees; to participate in ecological project governance, SOL is required as a voting credential; to ensure the network security that projects depend on, SOL is needed for node staking — it can be said that SOL is the 'ecosystem token' that connects all builders, users, and project parties, and its value is the 'credit endorsement' of the entire Solana ecosystem.
The current crypto market is at a turning point 'from chasing superficial hotspots to returning to underlying value.' Too many people are focused on the APY of DeFi protocols and the gameplay design of new games, while neglecting a fundamental fact: all superficial innovations ultimately rely on the support of the underlying public chain. Just like in the Internet era, the real money was made not by any specific website, but by companies providing network infrastructure; in the crypto era, the true long-term opportunities are also hidden in 'underlying fuel' like SOL that supports all ecological innovations.
Stop getting lost in the endless details of new protocols. Smart money has already given the answer through action: when you are unsure of 'where the next opportunity lies,' start from the foundation — choose an ecosystem that is continuously expanding, hold its core assets, and then wait for the growth of the ecosystem to bring you returns. And Solana (SOL) is currently one of the most noteworthy targets in this logic.
