At two major events in Hong Kong—Consensus Hong Kong 2026 and the Accelerate APAC conference—leaders from the Solana ecosystem outlined an ambitious roadmap to transition the network from its association with memecoin speculation and the FTX collapse to becoming a foundational layer for global finance. The discussions marked a significant shift in tone, focusing on institutional adoption, compliance, and building scalable infrastructure for traditional financial markets.
Resilience After FTX: Armani Ferrante, founder of Backpack Exchange, described the FTX collapse as "the most brutal possible experience you can imagine," noting that many ecosystem startups lost significant treasury portions. However, Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero and former head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, emphasized that "Solana lost no technical teams. It’s the developers that keep building throughout these markets." This retained technical base is now seen as the foundation for the network's next phase.
Focus on Application Layer and User Experience: The builders argued that the next chapter for Solana centers on bringing traditional finance onchain. Ferrante stated, "The single most important thing happening right now across any blockchain is all of finance coming onchain." Xiao Xiao Zhu, president of decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter, highlighted that value is increasingly accruing to the application layer, noting, "Users absolutely do not care whether an application is built on Solana or Ethereum. It’s just about the user-experience."
Institutional Roadmap at Accelerate APAC: The Accelerate APAC event adopted a clearly institutional tone, with panels addressing SOL Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), stablecoins, and tokenized securities. Participants included major traditional finance firms such as Mirae Asset, ChinaAMC, CME Group, Fireblocks, and Cumberland. Discussions centered on practical measures for integrating regulated products, emphasizing compliance, custody, and scalable payment infrastructure.
Key Institutional Pillars: The event highlighted four main pillars for Solana's institutional outreach: payments infrastructure, tokenization frameworks, custody standards, and regulated ETFs. Sessions dedicated to payments focused on compliant stablecoin rails and cross-border use cases designed for institutional deployment. Tokenization systems were analyzed for their capacity to enhance liquidity and capital efficiency in traditional financial instruments.
Infrastructure and AI Integration: Infrastructure providers detailed technical requirements necessary to sustain continuous settlement and high throughput, emphasizing measurable performance indicators like transaction cost and processing speed. Speakers from Alibaba Cloud and crypto-native builders described a growing convergence between blockchain settlement layers and AI-driven applications, arguing that automation tools can streamline custody operations, identity verification, and compliance reporting.
Caution Against Complacency: Despite the optimistic outlook, the panel at Consensus Hong Kong cautioned against complacency. Federa warned, "The worst thing you can feel in blockchain is comfortable. If you think you’ve got a moat, that means someone's about to knife you in the back and take your lunch."
By the close of the events, Solana positioned itself as an execution layer for internet capital markets, particularly across Asia. The consensus among builders is that adoption depends on seamless infrastructure integration, regulatory alignment, and transparent operational controls that allow financial institutions to participate in onchain markets with confidence.
