Solana Foundation President Lily Liu: DeFi Is What Gives Blockchain Its True Economic Purpose

TLDR: Lily Liu says DeFi is the primary economic engine that gives non-Bitcoin blockchains a reason to exist. Liu draws on ancient and modern history to argue no vision reaches scale without a strong economic engine. Networks must be neutral, global, and performant to deliver open financial access to 5.5 billion users. Liu separates corporate blockchain infrastructure from open systems, calling the divide philosophical, not technical. Solana Foundation President Lily Liu has made a bold case for decentralized finance as the backbone of every blockchain network. In a recent post, Liu argued that DeFi is not a standalone application category within the crypto space. Instead, she positioned it as the primary economic engine that gives non-Bitcoin blockchains their reason to exist. Her statement has drawn attention across the industry for its direct framing of blockchain’s core purpose and long-term direction. Liu Ties Blockchain’s Future to Economic Strength and Open Access Liu opened her argument by revisiting the original vision behind blockchain technology. That vision has carried several names over the years. She wrote that terms like “open finance, decentralized finance, internet of money, tcp/ip for money” all point to the same goal. The aim has always been moving financial infrastructure from analog to digital for 5.5 billion internet users. Blockchains are tech for finance. The moonshot that Bitcoin originally proposed, that many of us came to build, has gone by many characterizations over the last decade: open finance, decentralized finance, internet of money, tcp/ip for money to name a few. All point to the… — Lily Liu (@calilyliu) March 14, 2026 She anchored her position in historical patterns from both ancient and modern periods. No major vision, she argued, has reached scale without a strong economic engine driving it. “Look around in history both ancient and modern,” Liu wrote, “and there is not a single vision that has reached scale without an economi...