Solana’s next act is less about memecoin mania and more about money itself, according to Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante. In an interview with CoinDesk, Ferrante said the past year has seen the Solana ecosystem pivot from flashy experiments—NFTs, social tokens and gaming—to building the plumbing of finance: onchain trading, payments, market structure and settlement. “People are really starting to think about blockchains as a new kind of financial infrastructure,” Ferrante said, noting the shift away from “random moonshot-like games” and toward things that look, and behave, like traditional financial systems. That transition makes Solana seem muted to some observers accustomed to headline-grabbing token rallies, but Ferrante framed the calm as a mark of maturation. The network is increasingly being developed as a high-throughput layer for what proponents call “internet capital markets”—fast, native onchain trading and settlement rather than siloed ledgers and manual reconciliation. The timing also reflects a split between crypto’s retail-driven sentiment and growing institutional interest. Despite subdued token prices and cautious crypto-native investors, Ferrante said Wall Street appetite for onchain tools has rarely been stronger, driven by momentum around tokenization, stablecoins and automated settlement rails. Underpinning this vision is a simple idea: tokens are canonical ledger entries that represent ownership, and that model can be applied across assets from stocks to derivatives. “A token is just a canonical, agreed-upon ledger entry for who owns something,” Ferrante explained—an attribute he believes makes blockchains compelling neutral settlement layers. Importantly, Ferrante stressed that mainstream adoption depends on regulatory integration, not avoidance. “What maturity actually means is the real world,” he said. “And the real world isn’t a free-for-all.” For Solana, the bet is that building for regulatory-compliant financial infrastructure—rather than chasing hype—will pay off as more global finance moves onchain. Ferrante is scheduled to speak at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference next month, where he’ll likely expand on Solana’s road from memecoins to markets. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

#ETF #NFT