Alejandra Martinez, a partner at Foundation Capital, published a tweet today on X focusing on the fundamental shift in the competitive logic of public blockchains. Martinez argues that as high performance gradually becomes a fundamental threshold for blockchains, competition among Layer 1 blockchains is no longer about technical specifications or long-term roadmaps, but has shifted upwards to the "distribution capabilities" at the application layer and user end. The article uses Solana as a core case study, exploring how it has secured a key position in the formation of the "internet capital market" through mobile devices, ecosystem integration, and more assertive product design, and further analyzes the impact of this strategy on the public blockchain ecosystem and developers. Original Article: "The Era of Opinionated L1s is Here and Solana Will Win It on Mobile" Author: Alejandra Martinez, Partner, Foundation Capital Translator: Zombit The era of blockchains simply competing on TPS and relying on long-term technology roadmaps to attract developers is over. High performance is now merely an entry barrier for any L1 to gain adoption, not a competitive advantage. Therefore, the competition among L1s is gradually shifting to the top layer of technology stacking—no longer infrastructure or white papers, but the applications and users themselves. Solana is well-positioned to capitalize on this shift. We have been following Solana since our investment in 2018. The blockchain and its ecosystem have reached a fairly mature stage, freeing Toly and Solana Labs from focusing primarily on performance. Solana's focus on the Internet Capital Markets (ICM) and the team's investment in Seeker provide a natural path for "assertive" design from hardware to application layers. (The "opinionated" nature mentioned in the text refers to Apple not just selling chips and operating systems, but directly telling users "how to use the phone." In contrast, early public blockchains were more like selling components; how to assemble them was left entirely to the developers.) Ultimately, Solana will prevail in the realm of "capital formation" because it is best positioned to gain an advantage in scenarios where billions of people and institutions actually interact—namely, mobile devices. Blockchain needs to be "opinionated." In the past, blockchains could create considerable value simply by providing neutral backend infrastructure, allowing third-party developers to build applications on top of it (Bitcoin being a significant exception). However, this model no longer holds true. Level 1 (L1) blockchains have achieved a certain level of regulatory clarity and high-performance technology, but they are facing competition from financial giants. Simply providing ecosystem subsidies and funding core infrastructure development is no longer sufficient to drive substantial growth. The competitive foundation has shifted to the top layers of blockchains. In recent market cycles, centralized crypto applications have begun to bypass L1 and provide their own infrastructure. Binance created BNB Chain, while Coinbase launched Base (although L2), but the value it retains for itself far exceeds the portion it gives back to Ethereum. Emerging chains such as Stripe's Tempo and Circle's Arc are natively built for specific blockchain stacks and directly benefit from their parent companies' existing channels. Hyperliquid, through its highly assertive L1 design, offers a perpetual contract experience superior to centralized exchanges (CEXs). From a technical perspective, the ultimate future of these chains remains to be seen, but one thing is quite clear: distribution capability is key. Traditional chains that don't make clear choices about how they use their technology stacks will struggle to acquire new users. This trend is already evident: Polygon acquired Coinme and Sequence, transforming into a US-regulated payment platform; and Vitalik recently announced Kohaku, pushing privacy stacks for Ethereum. For Solana, its defensible technology, revenue, and ecosystem mean that "whether to compete upstream" is not a matter of life or death; however, proactive action at the application and design levels will help it counter proprietary L1 blockchains and leverage the distribution advantages of large public chains. The Key to the ICM Vision: Mobile To truly realize the ICM vision, we must first understand its current obstacles. The current on-chain experience remains cumbersome, fragmented, and highly dependent on the browser. While many teams within the ecosystem are working to improve Solana's performance and attract mobile users, we have yet to create a product that truly delivers on users' mobile devices. The future envisioned by ICM is one where anyone with internet access can create or participate in markets anytime, anywhere, allowing capital to form new assets both top-down and bottom-up. However, for ICM to break through, the market must capture people's fickle attention—and attention begins with mobile phones. Solana's performance and underlying primitives give it the potential to become the default operating system for all mobile encryption applications. What it lacks is the liquidity and application to demonstrate "how capital is formed in a scalable context." Solana Labs and Mobile ICM In implementing mobile ICM, almost no team has a greater advantage than Solana Labs. Our optimism stems primarily from Toly himself—after creating a top-tier blockchain, he didn't rest on his laurels but chose to return to the forefront, leveraging Solana Mobile to revitalize his mobile background. Solana Labs possesses mobile distribution capabilities and high-level support.The potential is to build a vertically integrated application that can scale to millions of users. Currently, Solana Labs has completed half the puzzle, creating mobile hardware and a mobile ecosystem native to Solana. Solana Mobile recently launched the SKR token as a native asset for the crypto mobile era. But this shouldn't be the end—Solana Labs should extend further to the application layer, unlocking more branches of ICM. Building shouldn't stop until Solana is running at the underlying layer of every mobile crypto application. Imagine a Toly-style front-end: DEX, perpetual contracts, payment integration—give them two coffees and a beer, and we'll sign up. Impact on the Ecosystem The most sensitive question is: what does it mean for ecosystem developers if Solana Labs builds its own mobile applications? On any closed platform, developers worry that Meta or OpenAI will copy the most successful applications and exclude competitors from the platform. However, Solana Labs' vertical integration strategy may take a completely different direction. Solana is permissionless; no one can shut down competitors—not even Solana Labs itself. Healthy competition allows Solana Labs and ecosystem developers to learn from each other and evolve together. More importantly, Solana Labs' fundamental purpose in expanding its capabilities is not to sacrifice others to amplify its own product or commercial interests. The applications designed for these networks will reflect a commitment to long-term network health, rather than maximizing short-term value. These applications can integrate deeply with the entire ecosystem in ways that other independent teams or new chains struggle to achieve. Of course, this also means that if a project lacks distribution or technological advantages, it will be more difficult for developers to acquire users, forcing founders to think more strategically about their differentiation. Conclusion Since our initial investment in 2018, we have invested in Solana ecosystem projects almost every year. For us, Solana Mobile is not just an attempt to break free from the App Store duopoly, but also the infrastructure Solana is laying to lead the next phase of crypto adoption. We believe Solana should focus on the application layer, leveraging its distribution network to build, partner, and acquire like any large platform. This will make the entire ecosystem more competitive, and we look forward to continuing to invest in teams starting businesses on Solana. In the next five years, the winners and losers in the crypto world will not be determined by speculation or regulatory arbitrage, but by which core teams can make the right and assertive choices about "how to win at the top of the stack." We have already seen other L1 and centralized exchanges begin to adopt more assertive strategies, and we expect Solana to move in this direction as well.

$MEME has broken strongly out of its consolidation range, with buyers dominating. As long as the price remains above the breakout area, the upward momentum remains strong. {spot}(MEMEUSDT) Entry Point: 0.00115 – 0.00118 Take Profit 1: 0.00128 Take Profit 2: 0.00143 Take Profit 3: 0.00158 Stop Loss: 0.00108 #MEME

Ambush the "on-duty cat" (a term used to describe a group of cats on duty). At least several times the profit from the "local tyrant" (a term used to describe a group of people who sell their stock on Binance). #MEME $BinanceLife Contract address: 0xb5ce6dc8984aae0d2166c6a87affdb554df44444

During the crypto market crash in October, I specifically monitored BB's performance. While Bitcoin fell 15%, BB only retreated 8.3%, quickly rebounding to its pre-crash price. Curious, I looked up its supply and demand data: staking demand accounted for 41% of the total circulating supply, cross-chain settlement accounted for 23%, governance voting accounted for 18%, and true speculative demand accounted for only 18%. This structure of "primary demand, supplemented by speculation" is no wonder it's resilient. In terms of token economics, I've studied BB's deflationary mechanism: 60% of transaction fees, 30% of cross-chain settlement fees, and 30% of RWA strategy returns are used to buy back BB and destroy it. As of October, 120 million BB tokens had been destroyed, representing 5.7% of the total supply. I've also noticed that the more active the ecosystem, the faster the destruction rate. DEX trading volume increased 40% in September, with 2 million more destroyed that month than in August. Another detail that really stood out to me: 42.89 million tokens were unlocked in September. I initially worried about a potential market crash, but a week after the unlock, BB only fell 3.1% and quickly rebounded. Later, I looked up the lockup rules and learned that the tokens for the team and early investors would be released linearly over four years, with each unlock requiring a community vote. This "slow release + community oversight" mechanism completely dispelled my concerns about a "concentrated sell-off." #BounceBitPrime @bounce_bit $BB

Just added 10,000 spot positions to $UNI this morning. I remain optimistic about the future development of DEXs, with a target of 30-50 #UNI. {spot}(UNIUSDT)