# Ethereum's Institutional Pivot and Solana's Technical Resilience

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-08-20

## Transcript

I think ETH BTC is like maybe one of the best trades.
I think Ethereum is going to be a behemoth.
Bitcoin pumped yesterday for the first time in what feels like months.
Is the bear market over or is this just a retest of resistance before more downside?
Hello and welcome to The Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that the cure for all of society's problems is a giant green candle on Bitcoin.
I'm your host, John Gillan.
Today is Thursday, August 20th.
And today we are joined by Lucas Chen.
Lucas is the Vice President of Research at Galaxy Digital and the host of the Galaxy Grid podcast, where he focuses on areas including Solana, Ethereum, and the intersection of crypto and AI.
Lucas is going to share a ton of crypto alpha with us today, so if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe.
Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it.
As a reminder, our podcast today is free, and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Sabre.Money, the stablecoin payments platform built for Asia, so keep an ear out for more information about them later in the show.
But for now, welcome to...
the Milk Road Show, Lucas.
How are you, sir?
Hey, John.
Nice to meet you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm doing well.
I mean, yeah, like you said, big green candles tend to cure all ailments.
Yeah, they do.
I just think that the whole industry feels different today.
The vibe shift is palpable.
Let's just start with this, though.
So just to recap on this, the whole market cap of crypto pumped almost 10% yesterday.
Bitcoin is over 71K.
Ethereum is testing 2300.
Solana, 86.
Hyperliquid, 72, which is a wild move.
What's your reaction to all this?
Do you think we are now in a crypto bull market or what's your read of this year?
Yeah, I mean.
I don't want to say we're in a crypto bull market yet, but I definitely think it's a trend shift.
It's definitely a vibe shift.
You know, I think we were in a space where I think a lot of the smart money and people that have been around and through different crypto cycles recognize that the past, you know, five, six months were generally a good opportunity to accumulate assets that they thought were positioned to do well in another crypto bull run.
And I think they've been spending the time doing that.
I don't think they're going to be selling on this move up, you know, but I don't think that doesn't mean that there's no sellers that might emerge.
And so while I'm hopeful that this is just a straight up trend shift and the bull market has started, I tend to in crypto like it's you never know what's driving price, you know, and so you.
You do to some extent, but you don't to some extent.
And so I tend to respect the heuristics of the cycle.
And, you know, just I don't want to say anything that jinxed the board if it is starting right now.
But I'll definitely say that things are looking great.
You know, I think the reaction yesterday.
While it was caused by that headline, there's been some great posts on Twitter over the past 24 hours just looking at the amount of coins that have been absorbed on the Bitcoin side, kind of the amount of like seller slowdown that we've seen happen over the past few months.
And so I think all the conditions are ripe for crypto to start making that turnaround.
And I, you know, I'm hopeful the next year looks very positive.
I'm in the same boat as you.
I've been very hesitant to get too bullish on this because I'm just used to.
getting seeing pumps get sold off and and you know having hopes dashed um and you know to that point though there were around three billion dollars of liquidations i think some of the tallies are still coming in but uh it seems like a lot of this was forced buying by shorts getting liquidated as opposed to you know the market coming back maybe in size here at the same time just like you said it seems like another one of those like 10 10 vibe shift moments for the whole asset class how do you balance between these two things as somebody who's navigating these markets stay patient?
Are you looking at data?
How are you thinking about this?
Yeah.
I mean, so Galaxy ourselves, we have a very big OTC and trading desk, and they are looking a lot more granularly on a day-to-day basis at how to think about trading this market.
Myself on the research side, I'm generally trying to take a much longer term view.
And so I'm trying to look at generally, no matter what happens with price in the near term.
If you look at some of the fundamentals, whether that's like traditional fundamentals for what you have in TradFi or more like on the tech side, community side, in terms of what projects are doing to remain relevant, to pivot and to get themselves in the direction for when interest in crypto returns, they're well positioned to see if that stuff is happening.
And I will say over the past six months, I think this has reminded me a ton of post FTX.
mid-2023 where you had a lot of projects that people just stopped paying attention and if you just did look and do some deep dive you saw teams that were very strong both from their capabilities and on a funding standpoint um and had figured out kind of how to reorient themselves and remain relevant so that when interest return they do well and so for me like if i look at the big assets i think like especially a name like ethereum i think there's been a ton of that happening i think if you look on the application side which which is kind of a new phenomenon, I think, in this kind of upcoming bull run is that you do have a lot of applications that started last cycle, have survived, and on a fundamentals basis are still very attractive.
If you look at them, they've also kind of done a great job of firming up during the bear market and making sure they're positioned for the bull.
So from that perspective, I think things are looking great.
I do totally agree.
There was a lot of liquidation.
So what we need to see is spot buying come in.
ETFs looked good yesterday.
I think...
I checked this morning, I think the Coinbase premium has not really surged quite as much as you'd want yet.
But I think people are just a little bit of in shock.
That's kind of what you want for a move like that.
You want people to be left behind and you want them to be chasing.
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And that's kind of the place we're in right now.
Lucas, I want to talk to you more about Ethereum and Solana.
But first, I want to get more of sort of like a vibe check on where Galaxy is right now.
I think you all pumped like 15% on this news as well.
But talk to me about what the sentiment has been like over there and a little bit more about the role that you have in your seat and what your perspective is on all of this right now.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, so Galaxy.
It's been around for a long time.
I've been at Galaxy for almost about four and a half years now.
And we've been through bear markets.
It's a very experienced team.
And so, you know, they kind of know how to handle the emotions during bear markets.
Obviously, things get gloomier.
Obviously, you know, it's tough to kind of like find where the opportunities are and what's interesting during the bear market because all of the euphoria and hype goes out.
But Galaxy, I would say, has a...
lot of experience in this space and is very well positioned to kind of like not only survive during the bear markets but also like figure out kind of where the pockets of interest is and where they should be focusing their efforts you know research ourselves um we are basically sit within galaxy and we sit across all the businesses and we help all the businesses understand kind of what's happening in crypto at a much deeper leather level whether that is on kind of the market side or on like the fundamentals and technical side so you know we we talked clients a lot who are interested in, you know, specific projects in the space.
We publish a ton of research.
We put out research every single week.
It's all free and available on our website for anyone who wants it.
And so, you know, we kind of just view ourselves as the subject matter experts on crypto within Galaxy.
You know, I'll also just mention Galaxy.
We also now have a very big AI business as well.
You know, we have this massive data center, the Helios site down in Texas.
So we also have been doing a lot more, leaning a lot more into the AI side of things.
And, you know, especially for someone like myself who's looking at the intersection of crypto AI, it's been a really fascinating area to dive into.
I'd love to just get a little bit more of the high-level strategy that you see from Galaxy on these two megatrends of AI and crypto and that intersection because I think differentiating Galaxy's business is something that I'm always interested in hearing people try to do that because I think our audience and a lot of people have a pretty clear idea of what Coinbase is, what they do, what Robinhood is, what they do, and like...
an Nvidia or something, but where Galaxy fits in these two megatrends and the intersection of them, I think some people are a little hazy on.
Could you just talk to me a little bit about that?
Yeah.
So actually, you know, in the next few months, and I think last month, our CEO put out a letter basically talking about this idea of the economy that runs on code.
And basically that the fact is the economy is basically being rebuilt in code.
And there's two main forces that are driving it, right?
There's finance that's moving on chain.
And so that's where the crypto and digital asset side comes into the business.
Like, you know, we have a massive trading desk, we got asset management, we've got investment banking, we have a whole tech team that builds out solutions, settlement, custody, all these types of things.
And then you also have artificial intelligence, which is remaking every single industry, right?
And, you know, intelligence requires a lot of physical inputs.
It's got power, land, GPUs.
And so Galaxy is also, you know, has basically this large data center that helps feed that and drive that engine as well.
And so Galaxy really sits.
at the convergence of those two, what we would think are mega trends that we think are going to kind of drive a lot of growth over the coming decades and also be a lot where most of the exciting innovation and action is on a go forward basis.
Well, let's talk about the innovation and the action and the go forward basis.
I did an interview on this podcast about a month ago, two months ago, maybe now at this point, with the co-founders of Ethlabs.
And they said that they're trying to make Ethereum the root of global finance.
And that kind of fits right in with your thesis there about the whole economy being rebuilt in code.
You, I've heard you say recently that you've become bullish on Ethereum for the first time in a very long time.
And I thought it would be a great place to start the conversation.
What made this pivot happen for you?
And what's your updated outlook on ETH and Ethereum here?
Yeah.
So, you know, just as some context, I guess when I got into crypto, I like started out as a kind of like I was like a Polygon DGN yield farmer and like the 2020, 2021 and BNB stuff.
And then Solana came along and I was very early to Solana.
I was very involved in the NFT space there.
Just I was constantly using these chains and Solana for me.
was kind of the first time I used the chain and I was like, wow, like this actually feels pretty buttery smooth and I could see how this might get mass adoption over time.
It was like I was like, this is an Apple versus Microsoft thing for me with Solana versus Ethereum.
And so I was instantly drawn into Solana.
My primary coverage at Galaxy over the past few years has been Solana.
So you could say I'm like a sole maxi, you know, I'm not actually, but it's where I spend most my time.
But basically last year.
I started to get really interested in Ethereum because I started to see that there was real shifts happening across different layers of the stack, right?
You had this fundamental shift in terms of the technical outlook.
And that kind of culminated with the straw map that got published earlier this year.
You had a lot of shifts in terms of the leadership, right?
There's been all these mix-ups in terms of at the ETH Foundation.
A lot of people have issues with the ETH Foundation.
So people saw it as a negative.
I actually saw it as a positive.
I was like, all right, people want change.
We're starting to see change.
And for me, it actually started like, especially in January of this year, I really started to be like, this reminds me a lot of Solana in the post FTX era where.
people kind of, it was a different reason why people had given up on it.
You know, I think with ETH, people have kind of just like lost patience, whereas it wasn't like an FTX like collapse.
But everyone I talked to about ETH just was like, had the same line about like, oh, ETH has lost its compass.
It's no longer relevant.
But they couldn't point to anything that had happened recently, which gave me kind of a better read that I don't think people are actually looking into what's happening under the ground.
And so I spent a lot of time over the past year diving deep.
I've written a few reports about ETH recently, helping people understand what's happening at the technical level, what's happening in terms of at the leadership foundation, the launch of things like ETH Labs.
And it led me to believe it's a very similar setup to Solana.
That just coupled with what I think is a much broader macro narrative.
Solana had kind of this meme narrative that took off that really kind of put it into the next level in late 2023, 2024.
I think the tokenization stuff is very real.
And it's still early and a lot of it is pilots or stuff.
But at Galaxy, we've actually been running an internal tracker and we'll be publishing data on this later.
But just looking at...
the amount of initiatives that are being announced by some of the largest asset managers, some of the largest banks.
critical market infrastructure.
And if you look at it, it's just like a parabolic curve up and to the right.
And if you look at where a lot of it's happening, a lot of it is happening on Ethereum.
You've got BlackRats Builder, things like that.
And I expect that to just continue to accelerate over the next two years.
I think we're in the very early stages of institutions figuring out how they're going to interact and operate on chain.
And I think Solana will win some of that as well.
There'll be other chains that win, but I think Ethereum is going to be a real winner of that.
And I think that coupled with this new technical roadmap that they have, which addresses issues like privacy as default option on the layer one, scaling the layer one instead of focusing outside of the layer one, the quantum resistance.
All that for me comes together into a very compelling narrative where I think it's going to drive a lot of flows over the coming years.
It's really helpful, updated outlook on ETH and Ethereum there.
You tweeted out recently, I think about a week ago, that the Ethereum roadmap has never been better oriented.
But the big question now is execution.
And you spoke about this a little bit so you don't have to rehash everything.
But I'd be curious to hear what about the current Ethereum straw map, which Vitalik is currently updating.
pretty regularly.
What about that is so exciting to you?
And what in terms of execution do you want to see in order to maintain this bullish outlook on Ethereum?
Yeah.
So I think in terms of what's exciting, you're right.
It's what I just said.
I think it's focused on the right tenets.
If you look at what their North Stars are, they have kind of like five North Stars that set the long-term view.
It's exactly what you want.
Scaling the L1, privacy, quantum resistance, making L2s very scalable and interactable with the L1.
Those for me, I was like, all right, if we spent the past four years on Ethereum focusing on all of the wrong things, it looks like actually we're going to spend the next four to five years focusing on all of the right things.
The execution side, I think, is just like.
you know, crypto, it's always a risk.
These are really large organizations and entities, right?
And they are decentralized.
So it's not always easy to build consensus, you have fragmenting views and visions.
And so while you can have a really beautiful view of how you want the future to look for Ethereum, to actually implement that to get consensus amongst the different developers and the different validators can be very challenging.
And so I'm just always, you know, I always try and think, all right, what is the main risk?
And in crypto, it's normally execution on the technical side.
So far with Ethereum, they've done an all right job.
I mean, Glamsterdam is the next big update that they're coming out with.
And it's already been delayed a few times.
I would very much hope to see that.
um deployed in the next few months as a sign of confidence that they're on the right track and based on tracking the you know all developer calls and things like that it does seem like they're getting there and then after that they'll have the hagoda upgrade um which will come sometime in 2027 and so for me i just I continually want to see them shipping new updates.
I think that's something that Solana has done very well and why people have a lot of confidence in the Solana technical roadmap.
Ethereum, they've always been excellent researchers, but execution has always been a little bit slower.
So they're on the right track, but you want to see them keep shipping and keep going on this course.
Lucas, I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit to Solana.
As you said, you're one of the best experts on that ecosystem.
And I thought a way to kind of bridge between ETH and Solana here would be around this conversation that's been happening, these debates on issuance for the native tokens of a lot of ecosystems.
Ethereum, Solana, Nier Protocol, a lot of different ecosystems are debating right now.
Should they reduce their issuance and how?
There's a debate going on.
Yeah.
Ultimately, for me, I don't think this is like a super important issue over a long term.
I think it is important, right?
These are maturing ecosystems.
If you look at like what the issue and schedule was originally for Solana and why it was set that way, it doesn't like it's not like there was a ton of deep thinking put into it, I think, at the time.
That said, do I think like doubling disinflation is going to be like a key driver of Solana value accrual over the coming years?
Maybe if we were in an environment where there was so much demand for Solana that marginal tweaks like that actually had an impact, I don't think we're there yet.
I wrote a piece about this a few weeks ago in the Galaxy newsletter, which we do every week.
The demand side is what needs to really drive a lot of these ecosystems because that shows that they're being used and people want the native asset.
We're in the early stages, I think, of seeing a new demand start to emerge for both ecosystems.
I do think proposals like this, are going to be good over the long term.
You know, issuance, if you're a validator on a chain, yes, there should be some subsidy for running your technology.
But ultimately, like you want to be running a validator on a chain.
because you are getting value from the activity that's happening on the chain not that you're just earning subsidies that are coming from issuance right and so that can be in the form of mev it can be in the form of transaction fees or maybe it's just a loss leader right if you look at like a lot of key businesses on solana and ethereum no matter how much money they're making from their validators they just need to run a validator, right?
Because that is their business on that.
Their business runs on that chain and not having a validator is not responsible.
Like it puts them at a disadvantage.
And so I think like for me, ultimately, I want to see the demand side expand quite a bit before I'm like super amped about these changes.
But listen, I think we're in this like bear market period and it's always good to be making these types of changes right now.
If you look at Solana, This was brought up last year, like at first, like it was very controversial.
It caused a lot of debate, didn't actually pass.
It's actually been brought up twice before, and the second one didn't even go to a vote.
This one is looking more promising.
And I think that is kind of how governance works in these decentralized ecosystems.
It's like one proposal comes up, it's not what people want, and then it's just incrementally improved, improved, improved until you get to kind of a middle ground that satisfies everyone.
And so.
This is by far the least controversial Solana one that we've seen.
The Ethereum one is extremely controversial.
Like if you listen to all developers call yesterday, like there's definitely no consensus there.
There's a huge split, but I think it'll probably in the long term turn out similar to Solana stuff here where like it'll incrementally improve until everyone's satisfied and there will be some change.
I like the focus on.
increasing demand and utilization of the ecosystem and of the asset as opposed to this fixated conversation on supply.
However, I also agree it's good that people are debating these issues of monetary and economic policies for their ecosystems and trying to come to consensus.
The Ethereum proposal is called EIP 8363, but there are three different proposals that Solana is going forward with, and I don't know if they've passed yet.
I think voting is open or it's just going to be at the end of this month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, okay.
Maybe this would be really good to cover.
I think just for people who don't know, there's three different proposals they're being voted on right now.
Can you just tell me a little bit high level more about what happens to Sol as an asset or Solana ecosystem if these proposals go through and just like what investors or Solana users should know about these things if they don't already?
Yeah.
So, so I think only two of them are actually important right now.
And the first one is yes, it's an SIMD Solana improvement.
document that is asking to double disinflation so right now solana disinflates its issuance by 15 every single year this one would move it to 30% and would basically get Solana to its terminal.
I think it's like 1.5% or so issuance by 2029 or so instead of 2032.
So it would significantly, you know, by three years increase the rate at which the amount of sole that's being issued goes down.
You know, not necessarily a net benefit for a validator because it means you're getting less issuance.
But again, like from my perspective, validators, like you want the initial reason to have that issuance.
was to bootstrap an ecosystem where there wasn't activity.
These are now moving to more mature chains.
They're not fully mature, so I understand why you still need issuance, but we want to see these move to ecosystems where issuance is not the main driver of revenue for a validator.
So that's one of them.
The other one is actually a new fee burn mechanism and basically changes the way in which the amount of soul that you pay for a transaction is calculated and ultimately increases the amount that you're going to pay for some types of transactions.
And that would lead to a pretty material increase in the amount of soul that's burned.
It's not going to offset the amount of issuance right now.
But, you know, if you expect a massive uptick in.
on-chain activity over the coming years or so, it could lead to quite a bit of soul burn.
And so I think like right now, they're great proposals to get in place and get set up and make sure that I start building that alignment.
It's looking like both of them are going to pass right now.
We won't be sure until the end of this month when they actually like.
the vote is completed.
But they're great things to get in place because, you know, once these are voted on, you now actually have to go and build the tech underneath, you know, build the actual software to implement this and do it.
And that'll take a few months as well.
So it sets up well if you if you have a positive outlook for the space over the next few years.
Okay, that's really helpful.
So thank you for that context.
I wanted to talk about some of the other upgrades that are going on in the Solana ecosystem because they have been building and shipping all bear market.
The Alpenglow upgrade is still on the horizon.
What is the updated outlook on this?
What should people know about that?
When do you think that's going to actually happen?
And just talk to me a little bit more about some of these upgrades here.
Yeah, so Alpenglow will basically, you know, changes kind of like the consensus mechanism on Solana.
It's a pretty massive update.
It also really speeds up the finality on Solana to like milliseconds.
It improves Solana in terms of getting finality basically immediately when you send a transaction, which is definitely a huge, huge positive.
Based on like what we've heard, it looks like this is going to be happening by the end of the year.
They just shipped.
Anza, which is one of the big developer shops on Solana and runs the largest validator software on Solana, just shipped a major update this past month, actually, that includes basically all the core software that's actually needed for OpenGLOW to be implemented.
They're just kind of running, I think, a lot of bug testing, hack testing, make sure it's actually secure to deploy.
And, you know, Breakpoint comes, I think, I think Breakpoint is in November this year, maybe October.
I can't remember the exact date, but I would expect around then is when we get the firm date.
If not, they fully announce its release.
I would definitely expect it to come out by the end of this year.
And again, this is like for Solana, like these type of upgrades, they're highly technical.
And it's like...
If you're not deep in the weeds, you're kind of like feel like you're reading like just jargon.
But what the big takeaway is like we're talking about some of like the best developers in the world building really efficient, like increasingly making the chain more and more efficient with a view that this needs to handle like all of the.
transfer value traffic in the world at one date.
And that's what all these updates are building towards.
And it's very positive to see.
I would just say during a bear market, like to see the type of motivation and the cadence of shipping from some of these development labs is just impressive because it's like they're totally not deterred by price action and they have very firm conviction in where this space is moving.
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Totally agree.
And that's been really encouraging to me and to a lot of people.
This entire bear market is that the development, the work, the dedication hasn't slowed down at all.
Can you give me your updated thoughts on the Solana ecosystem here in terms of where you see it situated and their success in terms of going after that goal, like you said, of trying to be this hub for global trading?
Because obviously Hyperliquid has risen, gotten a lot of attention and competition there.
As you said, Ethereum seems to be winning the lion's share of some of these Wall Street.
things at the moment.
Obviously, these things all change a lot, but just talk to me about your updated thesis on Solana and how you differentiate it in the marketplace from some of these other competitors.
Yeah.
All right.
So if I said that like Ethereum was having a Solana moment, like I kind of feel like Solana is having a little bit of an Ethereum moment.
I'm not like as negative on Solana as I was on Ethereum back then.
But I think Solana is like, you know, it's kind of like reorienting and figuring out like, all right, what are the core business drivers for us on a go forward basis?
Yes, they lost the perpetuals race.
Hyperliquid was a big blow there.
I mean, the fact was Solana just never really did have a very good perpetuals offering.
They had Drift and Jupyter.
Jupyter is great, but it's basically got no assets.
It's got three assets you can trade on it and it's very expensive fees.
It's kind of just like the most retail product you can ask for.
It's not a super sophisticated mechanism.
Drift, obviously, unfortunately, there was a hack.
And also they're building on a general purpose train instead of a app specific chain like HyperCore is that's purpose built for.
perpetual so so it's a little bit of a disadvantage um i i publish a quarterly report on solana um you know if you look at the stats like volume and open interest in terms of perpetuals is ticking up quite a bit on solana but you know in the broader scheme of things it's still only a few percentage points of all on-chain perpetual.
So it's very small.
If you think it's a grow the pie situation, that means there's a lot of opportunity for growth there, but they're competing with a lot of players.
They've done a big push in the prediction market side.
Again, there, it's very early.
We haven't seen meaningful transaction volumes really take place.
What I'm super optimistic about Solana is, one, don't discount memes, right?
Yes, that cannot be the end-all be-all for Solana, but...
PumpFun is one of the most profitable and best businesses in all of crypto, even during a bear market.
Me and Solana continually has the most application fees, the highest DEX volumes.
top five chain fees every single quarter over the past few years, even during this bear market when everyone says memes are dead.
So memes continue to be a huge driver of activity on Solana and they're very positive for the ecosystem over a longer term in terms of just driving user growth.
I would expect they're doing a huge push into tokenized stocks.
That's working out very well.
They're also, I would say, like you want to see a lot of businesses, I think, emerge on Solana, like people just running businesses.
I would say things like MetaDAO, which is kind of like a way of creating a much better token ownership relationship, is one of the best projects in all of crypto and highly overlooked.
I would expect over the next few years, especially with recent U.S.
regulation, they get more traction.
You know, I think Gito, which has historically been kind of like the MEV, like they provide a lot of the MEV software initially.
and a lot of liquid staking software as well, they've really pivoted to become a front end for trading.
And so I'm very happy to see all of these teams on Solana basically be like, all right, how can we take the success we've already have and make sure to pivot and use the funds that we have to help continue to drive the growth and acceleration of Solana's adoption?
I think they're doing that.
I just think it's going to take a little bit of time to play out.
And so my mental framework, for crypto this cycle, to be honest, is that like Ethereum will be like Bitcoin in terms of attracting flows and like Solana will be like Ethereum in terms of like it needs to kind of reorient and reshape.
But I will just caveat and say, because like I do love Solana and I think some of the teams and just the user base, besides Ethereum, there is no ecosystem in crypto that has such a dense.
pool of developers and users like Solana does, which is a huge moat in crypto, right?
And so like, I think even myself have been getting a little bit too negative on Solana and I'm expecting them to kind of like just blow me away.
So I would go to Breakpoint in the fall.
I'm going to be there as well.
Like that's the only crypto conference I actually go to because I think it's full of high signal.
It's the best way to see what's going on on Solana.
Lucas, I really appreciate the honest outlook there, but I totally agree with you.
I think that Solana is defined by its resilience, and I think that that is going to serve it well in the long run.
And I'm just really encouraged by that too.
I'm glad you see that as well, because even when you're bearish, you're still bullish.
I want to bring the conversation back to this intersection of crypto and AI.
We talked about this just a little bit, because Galaxy kind of sits at that intersection.
But I'm curious your thoughts on how these things are coming together, if there's anything that's happening there that's got your attention, and just what you see happening at that space, because there's all this.
talk about agentic commerce and crypto and just what are you seeing happen there?
Yeah.
So crypto and AI for me is like one of those things that I think is going to start to really emerge over the next few years.
And like this bear market has been a good seeding ground for where there might be some product market fit.
But I just think it's a little bit early in terms of like actual on-chain demand and traction at the intersection from a product side.
Right.
So there's been a lot of focus on like the.
The agent side, you've got like X402 and MPP machine payments protocol, which are like agentic payment standards, right?
That are built to help agents transact.
There's been some good traction there, right?
Cloudflare actually uses X402 as like their integration for agents that, you know, buy access to websites and things like that.
But like, if you talk to like, you know, Visa and stuff like that, like they also have agentic payment standards, right?
And like...
the argument that blockchain is the only place where an agent can get a wallet and transact, I think is not going to be an argument for much longer.
And then you also talk to them about like what's demand and like it's clear everyone's just right now building for demand that doesn't really exist and will come down the road.
So I'm kind of just waiting to see how that evolves.
I think over time like We wrote a big piece on X402 and just agentic payment standards.
I do think using blockchains as a way to pay with micropayments and stablecoins for API access to unique data sources, kind of as what we're seeing with Cloudflare play out, will be a huge area in the future.
I did a lot of work on decentralized training and also on decentralized inference.
Decentralized training is one of those things where it's kind of a moonshot opportunity.
But I think as like GPUs improve and the algorithms needed to like train these models improve, that's something that will pop up because everyone's going to be wanting to have their own model.
And that combined with the ability to like use token incentives as a way to incentivize people to contribute GPU power or just pay people over blockchain rails for contributing GPU power makes a lot of sense to me.
On the inference side, I think there's some very interesting.
that are happening in terms of like proof of work, new proof of work networks that basically incentivize people to provide inference with their GPUs and then gives them a block reward.
But instead of like Bitcoin, where you're solving for a number, you're solving inference and you get the block reward by solving the inference.
And that helps to kind of like push down the price of inference by providing a subsidy.
I do think those are pretty interesting.
I've been very impressed with like what Venice has done.
And then I think finally for me, it's like.
I think we're moving to a world where like with AI, everything just moves a lot faster.
You can build things a lot faster.
You need to raise capital, deploy capital, enable people to transfer value all a lot faster.
And that's exactly what blockchains are really good at doing.
So I tend to think in the bear markets, like the best thing to be looking at in crypto are like.
what are the new frontier markets, right?
Like where is crypto experimenting with new types of markets that can't be easily replicated in TradFi because of regulation or just the way the software works?
And I think in AI is where we're seeing a lot of that experimentation happen in crypto.
And so I'm really excited to see what emerges over the next six months to a year.
Six months to a year is one thing.
I'm curious about your thoughts on like what.
2030 looks like and i'll ask this in two ways so cloudflare their cto said that by 2030 they think there's going to be trillions of ai agents operating and doing economic activity and that human usage of the internet will be relatively de minimis and then at the same time standard charter now they're notoriously bullish but they said we'll see somewhere around 30 trillion dollars of tokenized assets by 2030 as well And I'm just curious, where do you see that world settling down?
Is this going to be a winner-take-all type of thing?
It's all on Solana or it's all on SWE or it's all on Ethereum?
Does it get distributed?
What are your thoughts on that as we move in that direction here?
Yeah, I wish I knew the answer because I would own only that asset, I would say.
Because I do agree with that vision.
I think it'll have to be fragmented.
If you just look at where all these things are being built.
It's not like everything is being built on one chain.
And so I do think there's going to be fragmentation.
I think Ethereum is very well positioned.
Solana, I also think is well positioned on the AI front.
They actually opened an office in San Francisco recently just to kind of like really dig in there.
So, but I do see like blockchain, like I think what agents unlock, right, is like before like software was just like what humans use, but there wasn't any value really without human intermediation.
What we're going to start seeing with the rise of agents is like...
not only is it just software that like can do stuff, but it can also transfer value on its own.
And blockchains are just so well positioned to capture value or to facilitate that.
And so I think ETH, I think Solana is well positioned.
I wouldn't be surprised to see like one of these new players like, I mean, Amanat, Asui, like they have very strong tech teams.
I think they could be.
And then I think we're going to see a lot of like centralized chains or maybe it's going to be people that are building on L2s that then settle to Ethereum that have their own solution.
so they can retain control.
Ultimately, what all this gets to is like, you're going to still have to have a very robust kind of interchain communication system because I do think it's going to be fragmented for a long time.
I just think there's too much money to be made for like one person or one team to win it all.
You know, like everyone's going to be deploying solutions.
I love that outlook and I agree.
I don't think it has to be like we win and you lose, especially in crypto.
I'm rooting for everybody.
So thank you for that, Lucas.
I could talk to you for another hour, but we got to start wrapping this up here.
I want to ask you what you're researching next, what's your focus on, what reports you're working on next and just what's got your interest and attention right now in crypto?
Yeah, so.
I'm doing this kind of like big data dive right now that's just looking at institutional adoption of crypto.
And what we're really trying to see is just like understand this every day you see announcements, right?
Like this standard HSBC is doing this Galaxy and BNY are doing this, right?
I don't think there's a really good central repository that has basically all of those announcements and a breakdown of like, all right, is it a pilot?
Is it a launched initiative?
Is it an expansion of an existing initiative?
And so I'm basically working on like a really in-depth data.
like i'm just collecting as much data as i can looking at every single initiative that's been announced by all these different major financial institutions over time um and kind of like providing the data there and and that should be coming out in the next month or two other than that you know i'm continuing to focus on um what's happening on ethereum solano always like i think if we are starting off a new bull run like it's just going to be impossible to keep it's been nice being in the bear market it's like things move a little slower and you can actually keep up with what's going on.
It's going to be very hard to keep up with what's going on there.
And finally, we continue to kind of look at the AI world and this idea of the economy that runs on code.
So if you've got AI and digital assets, how does that work together?
And so we'll be continuing to do work on that.
I feel like things have been moving too fast for me in the bear market.
I'm going to collapse when the bull market starts, my friend.
Final question here.
Ethereum led on this recent rally, this pump.
I think that surprised a lot of people.
A lot of people were expecting it would be Hyperliquid or Bitcoin or something else.
And I think that got a lot of people's attention.
Going into the end of 2026, do you think Ethereum is going to lead in performance?
Do you think Bitcoin will take that role back?
Or what is your outlook?
Or what are you most bullish on in crypto going into the end of the year?
I mean, so just remember, like, this is just me talking.
This doesn't represent any, this is not financial advice.
This doesn't represent anything from Galaxy at all.
This is just myself.
You know, I think ETH BTC is like maybe one of the best trades.
I think Ethereum is going to be a behemoth.
I think the idea that it is a credibly neutral settlement layer, as much as that is a meme.
I do think will become more important over the coming years with the rise of AI, with risks like quantum and with a ton of banks moving on chain.
And I think that is really, I don't think people appreciate that yet.
I don't think people appreciate the amount, like how under owned Ethereum is relevant relative to where it's been in the past.
Right.
You know, like I think the bankless hosts, like I actually think David's a great guy and I appreciate everything he's done, but like.
him selling when he sold it was just like what like could there be a better signal of like how many people have just been completely washed out of ethereum and just capitulated so i i love ethereum i i do think names like hyper liquid um you know in the perp space i think those i i don't know if ethereum's such a big asset it's hard to say that it could outperform them but it's just like when i when i have conviction that's where i like to you know position myself and Ethereum somewhere I have a lot of conviction.
I'd also be really looking at like fundamental applications that have really good businesses.
So Hyperliquid, it's not an application, it's a chain, but I think of it more of an application.
I think stuff like Pomp, you know, I look at some of like the DeFi space and some of it I don't think is attractive.
Some of it on like, wow, the TAM and the growth availability here is quite interesting.
And then the last thing I would just say is We've been operating in this paradigm where tokens are viewed as useless and basically they have no value capture or there's no link to the underlying equity.
I think you're going to see a lot of that shift over the coming year.
And you've already seen kind of like the early stages of it, whether with Uniswap or Aave or stuff like that.
And that puts pressure on every other team to do it.
And so I would be looking very closely at, you know, companies or applications that previously the token was uninvestable and trying to identify like, all right, what is management doing here?
Is there a route to where like this token actually becomes a much better claim on what the underlying project does?
Lucas Chan, VP of Research Galaxy Digital, thank you so much for being on the Millcroach Show.
Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, so my Twitter is up to date now.
It's a very cringe name, I know.
And you can also please, you know, go to the, I post most of my stuff there.
Go to Galaxy Research, our website.
We post everything for free.
We have a weekly newsletter.
We do, you know, weekly content alerts and things like that.
We also have a podcast every Monday called Galaxy Grid, where it's just myself hosting it with our other analysts talking about relevant and topical events in crypto.
But yeah, you know, thanks so much, John.
This has been an awesome conversation.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm glad to have you on the show.
And by the way, I do love your podcast.
It's one of the most underrated sources of alpha in the industry.
So if anybody's not, definitely check out Lucas.
Lucas, I'm looking forward to catching up in the bull market, man.
Yeah, me too.
Thanks so much, John.
And thank you all for joining us.
I hope you all learned something today.
So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkrow Show.
Thanks for being here, everyone.
Bye.
Everything you hear on Milk Road is for informational purposes only.
These are our personal opinions, not financial advice.
And we may own some of the investments we talk about.
Always do your own research and make the decisions that are right for you.
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