Solana's Progression Towards Empowering Financial Markets on the Internet

Solana's Progression Towards Empowering Financial Markets on the Internet

Solana Announces Focused Technical Roadmap for Liquid Decentralized Markets

Solana, the high-performance blockchain, has unveiled a multi-year technical roadmap aimed at addressing market structure challenges and establishing Solana as the home to the world's most liquid markets. The roadmap, a collaborative effort by Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Anza's Max Resnick, Jito Labs' Lucas Bruder, DoubleZero's Austin Federa, Drift's Chris Heaney, and Multicoin Capital's Kyle Samani, focuses on network scalability, transaction fee reduction, advanced financial tooling integration, and ecosystem expansion.

Short-term Developments (2025-2026)

The short-term developments include the rollout of the Firedancer validator client to improve speed and network uptime, enhancing overall throughput and resilience. Additionally, zk compression tools are planned to reduce gas fees by up to 90%, significantly lowering transaction costs. Native support for token extensions such as stablecoin compliance is also on the agenda, aimed at ensuring regulatory alignment and growing institutional adoption.

Expansion of DeFi applications, real-world asset tokenization, and payment systems on Solana is another short-term goal, aiming to deepen liquidity and ecosystem usage. The Jito's Block Assembly Marketplace, offering features similar to Application-Controlled Execution (ACE), is scheduled to launch in the next three months. Anza is also planning transaction landing improvements within the same period. Lastly, Solana Mobile v2 is set to launch, promoting broader crypto access and user engagement on mobile devices.

Medium-term Developments (2026-2027)

In the medium term, Solana aims to continue throughput optimization and developer experience improvement to support widespread DeFi, NFT, and financial app deployment. Integration pathways with traditional financial and enterprise systems are also on the agenda, positioning Solana as a foundational layer for next-generation decentralized apps and bridging the gap between crypto and institutional markets.

Growing on-chain liquidity, supported by projects like Drift Protocol, is expected to facilitate derivatives and low-cost high-speed trading that appeals to professional traders and contributes to market depth.

Long-term Developments (Beyond 2027)

In the long term, Solana is planning major ecosystem-wide upgrades to solidify its role as the backbone for internet capital markets by offering superior speed, low fees, and rich developer tooling. Ongoing work on advanced privacy and security features is also planned, with possible future integration of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies to enhance compliance and scalability.

Expansion towards broader interoperability with other blockchains and legacy financial infrastructure is another long-term goal, aiming for seamless cross-market liquidity and growing total value locked across diverse financial protocols. Solana is also aiming to establish itself as a universal settlement and liquidity layer for global digital asset markets and decentralized finance.

The roadmap reflects a multi-year, layered vision focusing on speed, cost-efficiency, developer support, and financial system integration to solve existing market challenges such as fee friction and limited liquidity, positioning Solana as a leading platform for liquid and accessible decentralized markets worldwide.

The authors believe that testing market structures in production, gathering data, iterating, and repeating is the only way to determine the best market structure at a specific moment in time. The focus is on Application-Controlled Execution, allowing on-chain applications to control transaction execution order. Solana is building a flexible foundation to facilitate ACE because it is believed to be the fastest possible path to convergence on the best possible market structure.

Application-Controlled Execution could enable features like sniper protection in token launches, as it allows control over transaction execution order. Key players believe this focus will help Solana become home to the world's most liquid markets. Solana developers are collaborating on this focused technical roadmap to change Solana's market microstructure.

[1]: Link to the original blog post [3]: Link to the original source document [4]: Link to Drift Protocol's website [5]: Link to Solana's official website

1. Solana's technical roadmap, a collaborative effort, encompasses network scalability, transaction fee reduction, and the integration of advanced financial tooling for the growth of liquid decentralized markets.
2. The short-term developments include the improvement of speed and network uptime, the reduction of gas fees by up to 90%, and the expansion of DeFi applications, real-world asset tokenization, and payment systems on Solana.
3. Solana aims to continue throughput optimization and developer experience improvement in the medium term, with the integration of traditional financial and enterprise systems to bridge the gap between crypto and institutional markets.
4. In the long term, Solana envisions major ecosystem-wide upgrades, expansion towards interoperability with other blockchains, and establishing itself as a universal settlement and liquidity layer for global digital asset markets and decentralized finance.
5. Solana is also focusing on Application-Controlled Execution, which could enable features like sniper protection in token launches, aiming to become home to the world's most liquid markets.
6. The authors believe that testing market structures in production, gathering data, iterating, and repeating is the key to determining the best market structure, and Solana is building a flexible foundation to facilitate this through Application-Controlled Execution.

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