Summary
Solana Foundation chair Lily Liu argues that tokenization is changing how value is created, owned, financed and transferred. She sees stablecoins, institutional on-chain assets, blockchain infrastructure and AI-driven economic activity converging into a long-term expansion of internet-native capital markets.
A shift from digitized finance to digitized assets
Solana Foundation chair Lily Liu argues that tokenization is not merely creating more ways for people to access digital tokens. In a commentary compiled by TechFlow, she presents it as a broader change in how value is created, owned, financed and transferred. Her conclusion is ambitious: an internet-native capital market could eventually become the world’s largest capital market.
The argument is not simply that blockchains will replace existing exchanges or financial institutions. Instead, Liu describes a gradual migration of money, assets and ownership onto infrastructure that is continuously online. Earlier waves of financial digitization mostly changed how information moved and how transactions were executed. The underlying asset, its legal form, its ownership records and the role of intermediaries often remained largely unchanged.
Tokenization seeks to alter that foundation. A token can, in principle, connect an ownership claim with transfer rules, permissions and settlement logic in a programmable system. Whether that technical representation corresponds to an enforceable legal right remains a separate question, but the distinction is central to understanding both the opportunity and the constraints.
Four forces moving toward the same market
Liu identifies four developments that she believes are converging around tokenized capital markets.
The first is the growth of stablecoins. Stablecoins demonstrate that digital representations of money can circulate on public blockchain networks and support transfers across borders and applications. They can also provide a common settlement medium for on-chain assets. Their use, however, is not independent of institutional design. Reserve quality, redemption terms, issuer governance, consumer protection and jurisdiction-specific rules all influence whether a stablecoin can function reliably in a financial market.
The second is the movement of institutional assets on-chain. The article points to tokenized Treasuries, equities, private credit and other real-world assets as examples of markets seeking new distribution and settlement channels. It also states that real-world assets worth hundreds of billions of dollars were traded on Solana over the past year. That figure is presented in the source material as an ecosystem-level claim; its precise scope, asset composition and measurement methodology would require separate verification.
The third is the maturation of blockchain infrastructure. Networks are increasingly being evaluated against the speed and cost requirements of real economic activity, rather than only against the needs of speculative trading. Performance is important, but it is not enough to create an institutional market. Issuance controls, identity processes, custody, compliance monitoring, privacy, dispute resolution and interoperability are equally important.
The fourth is artificial intelligence. Liu argues that AI may create new types of economic participants, including automated systems that need programmable money to operate. If software agents can initiate payments or allocate resources, they may expand the number and variety of participants in digital markets. That possibility also raises questions about authorization, spending limits, data security, fraud, error correction and legal responsibility. An AI agent that can interact with financial infrastructure requires more than a wallet address; it needs a carefully defined authority model.
Distribution may become an element of valuation
Traditional capital markets were built when information sharing and value transfer were expensive and slow. Digital networks have reduced those frictions, but market structures still reflect the old environment. Assets remain separated by geography, licensing arrangements, investor eligibility rules and minimum investment sizes. As a result, a market may contain attractive or productive assets without giving them efficient access to all of the capital that could potentially hold them.
Tokenization is presented as a way to widen those channels. In theory, an asset issued in one jurisdiction could become accessible through an internet-based distribution layer, subject to the rules that govern its issuance and sale. An asset previously available only to large institutions could also be represented in smaller units or connected to a broader set of financial applications.
The important qualification is that tokenization does not automatically eliminate regulatory boundaries. A token that can technically be viewed from anywhere is not necessarily a security that can legally be sold to anyone. Investor classification, offering restrictions, transfer controls and local licensing requirements continue to determine who may access a product and under what conditions.
Liu compares the potential mechanism with American depositary receipts. ADRs made foreign shares accessible in a form that U.S. investors could use, helping issuers reach deeper pools of capital. The underlying idea is that distribution can affect the relationship between an asset and its funding base. If tokenization can extend a similar model across more asset classes and jurisdictions, distribution capacity could become a component of valuation.
The comparison also highlights the work that must be done. Depositary receipts rely on financial institutions, legal agreements, custody arrangements, disclosure obligations and established processes for corporate actions. A tokenized asset seeking to perform a similar function would need equally clear answers about what the holder owns, who safeguards the underlying asset, how redemptions occur and how disputes are resolved. Global technical access is not the same as global legal enforceability.
Ownership and the financing of existing wealth
On the investor side, the proposed benefits of tokenization fall into two broad categories: broader access to ownership and greater ability to use existing assets within financial arrangements.
Geography, minimum ticket sizes and investor qualification standards have historically excluded many participants from parts of the capital market. Tokenization can support smaller units of ownership and automated transfer processes at the technical level. Whether those features are permitted for a particular asset remains a matter of regulation, issuance structure and platform policy.
The second possibility concerns the financing value of assets already held. Much of the world’s wealth exists in forms that are difficult to transfer, value or pledge, including private-company interests, real estate, receivables and other illiquid claims. If an asset has a clear ownership record and a reliable transfer framework, it may be easier to assess as collateral or as a source of future cash flows.
The source describes this ambition as a form of “basic ownership for everyone”: allowing more internet users to own a share of the value created by economic activity and allowing that ownership to remain economically productive. It is a powerful vision, but it should not be confused with an automatic reduction in risk. Tokenization does not remove credit risk, valuation uncertainty, liquidity risk or enforcement problems. Moving an asset onto a continuously operating market can make these risks travel faster.
The institutional question is custody, not just throughput
The source material says that the New York Stock Exchange, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation and the London Stock Exchange are exploring possible forms of on-chain equity markets. Such work suggests that the debate is moving beyond whether blockchains can record assets. The more practical question is how on-chain records can fit into existing systems for issuance, trading, clearing, settlement, corporate actions and supervision.
For financial institutions, potential advantages could include more continuous settlement, programmable rules, more transparent movement records and greater automation. The operational requirements are substantial, however. Institutions need controls around identity, transaction monitoring, privacy, key management, approvals, segregation of duties and recovery from system failures.
This is where institutional wallet and custody design becomes relevant. Managing a tokenized asset is not only a matter of holding a private key. A custody system may need to distinguish assets with different transfer restrictions, maintain an auditable record of approvals, enforce transaction limits and connect blockchain actions with legal and accounting records. For automated systems and AI agents, those controls must also define what the agent is authorized to do and what requires human review.
More applications could become market gateways
Traditional capital markets depend on banks, brokerages, exchanges, custodians and other intermediaries to deliver assets to investors. Tokenized markets could distribute assets through a wider range of applications, including payment interfaces, financial platforms, corporate treasury systems and services designed for software agents.
That could improve discovery and distribution, but it could also fragment responsibility. Users may encounter assets through applications that do not provide the same level of disclosure, risk explanation or investor protection as regulated intermediaries. The growth of more “super applications” would therefore raise questions about how financial information is presented, who is responsible for suitability and compliance, and how customers recover from unauthorized or mistaken transactions.
Competition may develop across the entire stack: base-layer networks, issuance platforms, wallets, identity systems, custody services, settlement providers and user-facing applications. Speed and low fees may attract activity, but durable institutional adoption will also depend on governance, resilience and the ability to reconcile on-chain records with off-chain legal rights.
A long-term thesis with significant conditions
The Solana Foundation’s thesis rests on a clear premise: money, assets and ownership are gradually moving onto programmable, always-on internet infrastructure. The interaction of stablecoins, real-world assets, AI and high-performance blockchains could change how capital is formed and distributed.
Still, the idea that internet capital markets will become the world’s largest remains a long-term forecast, not an established market fact. The outcome will depend on whether tokenized instruments represent enforceable rights, whether underlying assets are verifiable, whether investors receive adequate protection and whether custody and settlement systems can withstand operational and cyber risks.
The decisive question is therefore not how many assets are minted as tokens. It is what each token represents, who controls the underlying asset, which investors may access it, how transfers are monitored and what happens when a transaction or ownership claim is challenged. Tokenization may expand the reach of capital markets, but its success will be measured by the quality of those institutional and regulatory answers as much as by blockchain performance.
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