Inside a16z Crypto's Investment Thesis: Ali Yahya on Solana, Stablecoins, and the Future of Blockchain

The crypto venture capital landscape has undergone significant transformation since the exuberant days of 2021, and few firms have been as central to the industry's evolution as Andreessen Horowitz's dedicated crypto arm, a16z crypto. In a comprehensive discussion on the Lightspeed podcast, General Partner Ali Yahya offered rare insights into how one of the most influential venture firms in crypto is approaching investment decisions in 2025, why Solana has emerged as a leading contender in the smart contract platform race, and why stablecoins may represent the breakthrough application that finally brings blockchain technology to mainstream adoption.

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Yahya's perspective carries particular weight given his journey from Stanford computer science researcher to Google X engineer to becoming one of the founding partners of a16z crypto. His path to crypto venture capital includes early exposure to the Bitcoin white paper in 2010, a series of missed opportunities that many early Bitcoin observers can relate to, and ultimately a deep conviction in the transformative potential of blockchain technology that led him to help build what has become one of the most prominent crypto investment vehicles in the world.

The Origins of a Crypto Investor

Ali Yahya's introduction to the challenges of centralized financial systems began not in a computer science classroom but in Mexico City during the peso crisis of the early 1990s. Born and raised in Mexico, Yahya experienced firsthand the dramatic peso devaluation that saw the currency undergo a 1000x reverse split to re-denominate. Though he was only five or six years old at the time, this early exposure to the fragility of centralized monetary systems would later inform his appreciation for cryptocurrency's core value proposition.

The technical foundations came through Yahya's education at Stanford, where he focused on computer science with a particular emphasis on distributed systems and computer security. These specializations would prove remarkably prescient. In 2010, while conducting research as part of the Stanford Computer Security Lab, Yahya and his colleagues encountered the Bitcoin white paper. The small group of researchers read and discussed it together, finding it fascinating but ultimately dismissing it as a toy without significant practical implications.

"We all thought that it was just a toy. We didn't really take it seriously," Yahya recalled. "We didn't think that even though we thought it was fascinating, we had no idea or no conception of how important it was going to be."

Despite this dismissal, Yahya's interest was sufficient to set up a Bitcoin miner on the Stanford computer cluster. However, in what has become a common lament among early Bitcoin experimenters, he failed to keep track of his private keys. Any Bitcoin he mined during that period is now lost forever, representing his first visceral lesson in the unforgiving nature of cryptocurrency custody.

The Repeated Mistake of Underestimating Bitcoin

The story didn't end there. In 2013, Yahya found himself in his living room with a roommate, both lamenting their failure to capitalize on Bitcoin three years earlier. With the price then hovering around $100, both convinced themselves the opportunity had surely passed. This represented mistake number two in Yahya's crypto journey, a pattern familiar to countless observers who have repeatedly dismissed Bitcoin at various price points throughout its history.

Despite these missed opportunities, Yahya continued following the space throughout the early 2010s. He identified multiple pathways through which people enter the crypto ecosystem: some come through the political angle, attracted to the cypherpunk libertarian technology; others arrive through the technical side, drawn to distributed systems and consensus mechanisms; and still others discover crypto through consumer-facing applications like NFTs during subsequent boom periods. For Yahya, the technical path was primary, with distributed systems and consensus protocols capturing his imagination.

The 2014 launch of Ethereum represented a paradigm shift in his thinking. The introduction of smart contracts crystallized an important conceptual framework: blockchains are computers, not merely payment networks. This realization would become foundational to a16z crypto's investment thesis in the years that followed.

From Google X to Crypto Venture Capital

Before joining a16z, Yahya worked at Google X on robotics projects, pursuing his parallel interest in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. During this period, he maintained his engagement with crypto during nights and weekends, even attempting to convince Google X to develop crypto-related initiatives. However, Google's institutional reluctance to engage with cryptocurrency at that time meant these efforts went nowhere.

In 2017, Chris Dixon, who had been investing in crypto through the main a16z fund since the early 2010s (including the foundational Coinbase investment), approached Yahya with a proposition: leave Google, join the firm, and help start a dedicated crypto fund. This was before a16z had established a formal crypto vertical, and the opportunity to build something from the ground up proved irresistible. Yahya joined in 2017, and the rest, as he put it, "has been a fun ride."

The Core Investment Thesis: Computers That Make Commitments

At the heart of a16z crypto's investment philosophy lies a fundamental insight about the nature of blockchain technology. The thesis begins with the observation that blockchains represent a unique form of computer with properties unlike any computing paradigm that preceded them. The key innovation involves an inversion of the traditional power relationship between software and hardware.

In conventional computing, hardware maintains power over software. Whoever controls the physical infrastructure can modify, terminate, or manipulate the software running on it. Blockchain technology inverts this relationship. The software, through its distributed network architecture, holds power over the hardware. Individual miners or validators contribute computing resources but exercise minimal control over what the software actually does. Hardware becomes a commodity while software maintains sovereignty.

"Chris likes to say it's a computer that can make commitments and you can actually trust those commitments because the computer has logic that's self-enforcing and that is free of interference from any outside actor, whether it be just any person out there or whether it be even the people who originally built the system," Yahya explained.

Bitcoin provided the first demonstration of this capability. Its fundamental commitment—that there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins—is enforced not by any central authority but by the protocol itself. From this foundation, more sophisticated applications became possible: decentralized finance protocols that execute complex financial logic without intermediaries, and potentially non-financial applications like decentralized social networks where users don't have to trust that a "centralized monolithic $44 billion tech giant" won't censor them or revoke their ability to engage with their social graph.

Strategic Shifts in Response to Regulatory Environment

While a16z crypto's core thesis has remained stable, their tactical approach has evolved significantly based on external factors, particularly the regulatory environment. During the Biden administration, the firm operated under the assumption that DeFi would face substantial headwinds because the regulatory apparatus was most aggressive toward financial applications of blockchain technology.

"It felt like DeFi was going to have a very hard time to get adoption because essentially crypto was illegal," Yahya noted. "And all of the financial things were the most regulated."

This assessment led a16z to focus more heavily on non-financial applications—social networks, games, and other use cases that would be less directly in regulatory crosshairs. The theory was that these applications could gain traction while financial applications remained constrained.

The shift in regulatory posture under the new administration has prompted a strategic recalibration. With greater regulatory clarity emerging and potential legislation on the horizon, the firm now believes financial applications are more likely to achieve product-market fit first. This represents a notable reversal: rather than expecting consumer web3 applications to lead the way, a16z now sees stablecoins and other financial primitives as the near-term opportunity.

"The financial applications are the ones that are more likely to work first. And that's because those are the ones that are closest to product-market fit," Yahya explained. "Whereas the kind of consumer web3 applications, those are not as close to product-market fit."

The State of Crypto Venture in 2025

The crypto venture capital environment in 2025 presents a more measured picture than the frenzied activity of 2021. Yahya acknowledged that a16z crypto's deal pace has slowed from those peak periods, though he emphasized this is consistent with venture capital cycles generally. The current environment occupies a middle ground—neither the exuberance of bull markets nor the depths of the post-FTX winter.

The collapse of FTX in late 2022 precipitated a severe contraction in the space, one that Yahya believes affected crypto more than it should have given that FTX was a centralized company rather than a protocol failure. The irony that a centralized exchange's collapse was perceived as a crypto failure—when crypto's entire value proposition is to eliminate such centralized points of failure—was not lost on him.

"FTX wasn't even a protocol. It's like a centralized company imploding. Ironically, that's the kind of thing that crypto is supposed to help with and the fact that FTX was perceived as a failure of crypto is this deep irony," Yahya observed.

The recovery from that low has brought the market to something resembling normalization. Current activity clusters around stablecoin adoption and the intersection of crypto and AI—areas where Yahya sees both immediate opportunities and longer-term plays that may require technological maturation.

Multi-Stage Investing and Public Market Opportunities

One of a16z crypto's distinguishing characteristics is its flexibility across investment stages. The firm can deploy capital from the very earliest stages, including first money into pre-product companies, all the way to large later-stage investments of $100 million or more. Recent activity has included purchases of Layer Zero and Eigen tokens, signaling willingness to invest in liquid assets when valuations appear attractive.

"If we see an opportunity, whether it's private or public, if the opportunity is there and the valuation is reasonable, by all means we will do it," Yahya explained. When public crypto markets unfairly discount a company's tokens, the firm will "lean into that and then build up a position, which usually will partner with a founder and will buy tokens either from the foundation or strike some kind of arrangement for us to get exposure."

This flexibility becomes particularly valuable when public and private markets fall out of sync. There are periods when public tokens offer more attractive valuations than private deals, and vice versa. The ability to move capital across both domains allows a16z to optimize for opportunity rather than being constrained to a single market segment.

The Value of Long-Term Thinking

A recurring theme throughout the conversation was a16z's emphasis on long-term investment horizons. Yahya pushed back on the notion that this approach creates challenges, arguing instead that it simplifies decision-making relative to short-term trading strategies.

"In my view, it's actually easier. I think this again depends on who you are and what are the things that you are good at," he explained. "I think that the DNA of the firm makes it so that for us, it's easier to bet on the very long term because the short term dynamics are actually very hard to predict."

Short-term market movements are influenced by an enormous array of factors—political developments, interest rate changes, macroeconomic shifts—that prove extremely difficult to predict consistently. Only a small handful of massive macro hedge funds possess genuine alpha in trading on such dynamics. For venture investors, the longer time horizon allows conviction-based investing on the fundamental value creation potential of teams and technologies.

The key enabler of this approach is fund structure. By designing funds that can weather multiple market cycles, a16z positions itself to remain invested through volatility until the underlying thesis plays out. "It's very, very powerful to be able to be around and to survive for the long term, to kind of be set up so that you can weather the cycles," Yahya noted.

The Solana Story: From Passed Deal to Major Position

Perhaps the most candid moment in the conversation came when Yahya discussed Solana. He recently appeared on a podcast with Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko where he read the internal memo explaining why he initially passed on the investment. Despite that early miss, a16z eventually made a substantial investment in Solana and now holds a significant position in the ecosystem.

The Solana story exemplifies one of the greatest challenges in crypto: the ease with which founders can achieve financial success before their projects have truly succeeded. The prevalence of liquid tokens creates opportunities for early participants to cash out long before applications achieve product-market fit, leading many to lose motivation during difficult periods.

"It's so easy in the space to get distracted, split by the money, by the speculation, by the fact that it's easy to make it really big before you really make it big—like to win without winning and get very rich and then kind of check out," Yahya observed. "That happens so much in the space, and it's a bit of a tragedy."

What impressed Yahya about Solana was the commitment displayed by both Yakovenko and the broader community during the post-FTX period when many had written off the project entirely. Solana's price collapsed, questions swirled about its viability, and yet the team and community maintained their focus on building.

"It's been incredible to see the commitment especially through the very lows—like that moment after the FTX collapse when Solana went all the way down to... people assumed it was dead and it's amazing to see that through all of that, Toly but also the whole community have stayed strong," Yahya said.

Solana's Technical and Community Strengths

From a16z's perspective, Solana has validated itself across multiple dimensions. Technologically, it has scaled to handle transaction volumes that seemed impossible just a few years ago, finally delivering on the industry's long-promised "one penny, one second transactions." This performance breakthrough unlocks use cases—particularly in payments and high-frequency applications—that were previously impractical on blockchain infrastructure.

The firm has actively collaborated with the Solana community on core research and protocol improvements, demonstrating the depth of their engagement beyond capital deployment. This technical partnership reflects a16z's broader approach of providing value-add beyond mere investment.

Community strength represents another positive indicator. Yahya described tracking which ecosystems generate the most pitch activity as one way the firm gauges ecosystem health. "One of the ways that we tend to gauge this is by the number of people that pitch us and which ecosystem they're building on," he explained. "It's interesting to see that Solana comes up more and more and it's encouraging."

Network Effects and Layer One Winners

The long-term thesis on Solana connects to a16z's broader view on network effects in blockchain platforms. The firm believes strong network effects operate at every level of a layer one blockchain, suggesting a winner-take-most dynamic for smart contract platforms.

At the security layer, becoming the most secure blockchain attracts value, which encourages more participation at the security layer, making the chain even more secure—a self-reinforcing dynamic. At the developer layer, once smart contracts are written for a particular virtual machine in a specific language, migration becomes costly. Moreover, those deployed contracts become building blocks for subsequent developers, creating additional ecosystem value.

Application layer network effects emerge through integrations: once you're integrated with one protocol on a chain, integrating with additional protocols becomes easier. Finally, traditional network effects apply at the user level—if your friends are on a particular blockchain, you'll want to be there too for ease of interaction.

"All of those are strong network effects that I think leads to a winner-take-most if not winner-take-all type of dynamic for base layers, for the layer one blockchains," Yahya said.

The Stablecoin Opportunity for Solana

Given a16z's conviction that stablecoins represent the most likely near-term killer application for crypto, Yahya emphasized the importance of Solana capturing a significant share of this activity. The blockchain's performance characteristics—sub-second finality and sub-cent transaction costs—make it technically suitable for payments and financial applications.

"One of the things I think the Solana community should do is really lean in hard on winning stablecoin adoption because that will be very important," Yahya advised.

He pointed to Stripe's integration with Solana as an encouraging development and expressed hope for additional corporate adoption. However, he also acknowledged the current landscape presents challenges. Circle's partnership with Coinbase creates alignment toward Base, while Tether's dominant position doesn't necessarily advantage Solana.

The path forward may involve proliferation of stablecoin issuers. If legislation creates a standardized framework for stablecoin issuance, the barrier to entry drops and more entities—banks, fintech companies, asset managers—could become issuers. Competition would compress margins, potentially forcing issuers to share yield with the ecosystem to remain competitive.

"If that happens, I think what is also likely is that the standardization of what it means to be an issuer makes it more of a commodity business because now many more people can become one," Yahya explained. "The goal—the objective here—is make that happen on Solana. If you want Solana to win, you have to be in that game and in those conversations."

The Worldcoin Investment Thesis

Beyond infrastructure and financial applications, a16z has placed significant bets on the intersection of crypto and AI. The firm's investment in Worldcoin (now World) exemplifies this thesis. Yahya emphasized that the investment predates the recent highly publicized funding round, reflecting longer-term conviction in the project's mission.

The core thesis recognizes AI as creating an unprecedented challenge: an infinite supply of media that appears human-generated but isn't. The ability to distinguish humans from AI on the internet becomes increasingly valuable as AI capabilities advance. Worldcoin addresses this through biometric proof of humanity—specifically iris scanning—that creates a privacy-preserving attestation of humanness.

"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog—the old 90s saying. On the internet, nobody knows you're a bot. That's very real today," Yahya observed. "AIs have passed the Turing test. It's very hard to know whether you're interacting with an AI or a human."

The Worldcoin orb uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify humanity without biometric data leaving the device or being controlled by the company. Users receive an attestation they can use across services—dating apps, social networks, any application that wants to verify human users.

The WLD token serves multiple purposes beyond bootstrapping user adoption through distribution incentives. World Chain exists as a blockchain where token holders can interact, transfer value, and access applications. The integration with DeFi protocol Morpho demonstrates the ecosystem's potential: World users can now participate in lending and borrowing directly through their proof of humanity-enabled wallets.

Why Crypto Gaming Hasn't Materialized

The conversation touched on the persistent question of why crypto gaming—despite years of hype and investment—has failed to achieve mainstream adoption. Yahya's explanation combined several factors that together create a challenging environment.

First, the regulatory stigma around crypto created resistance from established game studios. AAA developers faced significant backlash whenever they explored crypto integration, with users recoiling from anything associated with the space. This "strong X factor" meant that any traditional application incorporating NFTs or crypto elements generated user disgust rather than enthusiasm.

Second, the infrastructure wasn't ready. Until recently, the cost and speed of blockchain transactions made game integrations impractical. "For the longest time, it's been extremely expensive to do any kind of transaction on chain. It's only recently that we now have one cent, one second transactions," Yahya noted.

The thesis for crypto gaming remains intact. Players already demonstrate willingness to purchase in-game items—Fortnite alone generates billions in revenue from cosmetic purchases. The crypto value proposition would enhance this: true ownership of items, the ability to trade on open markets, and potentially cross-game portability of assets and identity.

"If those were NFTs that you actually got to own and trade... I don't think that has a short shelf life. I just think that to your point about timing, they were too early," Yahya concluded.

The Sequence of Crypto Adoption

Yahya outlined a theory for how various crypto use cases might achieve mainstream adoption. Stablecoins likely come first, reaching hundreds of millions or even a billion users. This creates undeniable legitimacy for the space that helps overcome brand challenges.

"Stablecoins become the first killer app for the space where they finally reach hundreds of millions of people, we reach a billion people and they're all using stablecoins in some meaningful way. We can point at that legitimate use case for the space and it's undeniable, and then that helps legitimize the rest," he explained.

Financial institution integration follows, with traditional finance and fintech companies incorporating stablecoins meaningfully. At that point, large numbers of people have crypto in their wallets and the brand headwinds dissipate. Only then do the more futuristic applications—gaming, social, and other consumer uses—become viable.

Infrastructure vs. Applications: The Ongoing Debate

One of the most contentious topics in crypto venture involves the balance between infrastructure and application investments. Critics have complained about excessive infrastructure funding relative to actual user-facing products. Yahya offered a nuanced perspective rooted in computing history.

"I think this is the kind of thing especially in computing that goes in cycles where there will be like a long infrastructure era especially at the beginning because you can't build applications unless you have infrastructure," he explained.

The pattern involves infrastructure development enabling applications, which stress the infrastructure in unexpected ways, which creates demand for the next wave of infrastructure improvements. Personal computing, mobile, and the internet all followed similar patterns.

At the current moment, Yahya characterized the environment as balanced with perhaps a slight skew toward infrastructure. However, he suggested the pendulum may be swinging toward applications given that infrastructure has now reached the performance levels needed for practical use cases.

"If now the infrastructure has gotten to a point where you can actually do these things—you can actually do one second, one penny transactions—then now the burden is on the app layer. Let's build real things and use this in some way," he said.

The Case for Blockchain Network Effects Extending to Stablecoins

Yahya extended the network effects thesis from base layer blockchains to stablecoins themselves. Since stablecoins run on base layers, whichever blockchain wins the broader smart contract competition likely captures the majority of stablecoin activity as well.

This creates significant stakes for the current competition between Solana, Ethereum and its layer twos, and other smart contract platforms. The winner of the blockchain competition may simultaneously capture the stablecoin opportunity, compounding their advantages through multiple reinforcing network effects.

The Importance of Decentralization for Stablecoins

While acknowledging that much current stablecoin infrastructure relies on centralized issuers, Yahya emphasized a16z's conviction that decentralization remains important for crypto to achieve its full promise. The firm looks for opportunities to support stablecoin solutions built on decentralized infrastructure.

This creates some tension with the current regulatory direction, which has tended to favor centralized issuers who can implement compliance requirements more straightforwardly. However, the long-term vision involves finding ways to maintain decentralization while meeting legitimate regulatory objectives.

Looking Forward: What Success Looks Like

The conversation painted a picture of crypto's potential trajectory over the coming years. Stablecoins achieve massive adoption, bringing mainstream users into contact with blockchain technology for the first time. This legitimizes the broader ecosystem and creates demand for additional services.

Financial applications mature, with DeFi protocols offering competitive alternatives to traditional financial services. Infrastructure continues advancing, with Solana and potentially other high-performance blockchains handling ever-increasing transaction volumes at minimal cost.

Eventually, the non-financial applications that early crypto visionaries imagined become practical: decentralized social networks where users own their social graphs, games with true digital ownership, and applications we cannot yet conceive.

"Claiming now that those won't happen is like the burden of proof is on whomever makes that claim because normally in order to be confident about that assertion, you'd have to be confident that no smart person out there is going to come up with an idea that's non-financial that really leverages blockchain in a great way and finds product-market fit," Yahya concluded. "And it's a very hard one to make that claim."

The Role of Founders in Crypto's Future

Throughout the conversation, Yahya repeatedly returned to the importance of people over thesis. While a16z operates with clear strategic frameworks, actual investment decisions center on founder quality and conviction. The firm's experience with Solana exemplifies this: despite initial hesitation about the technology, continued relationship with the founding team eventually led to a major position.

The challenges unique to crypto—particularly the ability to achieve financial success before product-market fit through token appreciation—make founder selection especially critical. Those who maintain focus through volatility and continue building regardless of token prices represent the most valuable partners for long-term oriented investors.

This founder-centric approach informs how a16z evaluates opportunities across stages and market conditions. Whether investing in early-stage companies or acquiring tokens of established protocols, the firm seeks alignment with teams committed to building lasting value rather than capturing short-term opportunities.

Conclusion: Positioning for the Long Term

Ali Yahya's perspective on crypto investing in 2025 reflects the maturation of a market that has survived multiple boom-bust cycles. The exuberance of 2021 has given way to more measured optimism, focused on concrete use cases like stablecoins rather than speculative promises.

For Solana, the message is clear: the blockchain has proven itself technically and survived existential challenges. The community's resilience during the FTX winter demonstrated the kind of commitment that distinguishes lasting projects from temporary phenomena. But the competition continues, and capturing stablecoin adoption represents perhaps the most critical near-term priority.

The broader crypto ecosystem stands at an inflection point. Infrastructure has finally reached performance levels that enable practical applications. Regulatory clarity is emerging. Mainstream institutions are beginning to engage seriously with blockchain technology. Whether this moment represents the beginning of crypto's breakthrough to mainstream adoption or another false dawn remains to be seen, but investors with the patience and conviction to maintain long-term positions appear positioned to benefit regardless of short-term volatility.

Facts + Figures

• Ali Yahya experienced the Mexican peso crisis in the early 1990s, which saw the currency undergo a 1000x reverse split (re-denomination), providing early exposure to centralized monetary system failures.

• Yahya first encountered the Bitcoin white paper in 2010 while conducting research at Stanford's Computer Security Lab, but dismissed it as "just a toy" along with his colleagues.

• Any Bitcoin Yahya mined on the Stanford computer cluster in 2010 is lost forever due to not keeping track of private keys.

• In 2013, Yahya and a roommate convinced themselves they had missed the Bitcoin opportunity when the price was $100—representing his second major miss in crypto.

• Yahya joined a16z in 2017 after Chris Dixon recruited him to help start the crypto vertical, before the firm had a formal crypto division.

• a16z crypto is a multi-stage fund that can invest from first money all the way to $100 million+ later-stage checks.

• The firm has recently purchased Layer Zero and Eigen tokens, demonstrating willingness to invest in public market opportunities.

• a16z holds a significant Solana position and actively collaborates with the Solana community on core research and protocol improvements.

• Solana has achieved "one penny, one second transactions," a performance milestone Yahya described as a "Holy Grail" that unlocks many new possibilities.

• Stripe's integration with Solana was cited as an encouraging development for the ecosystem's stablecoin ambitions.

• The Worldcoin investment predates the recent highly-publicized funding round, reflecting longer-term conviction in proof-of-humanity applications.

• Fortnite generates billions of dollars in revenue from in-game cosmetic purchases, demonstrating demand for virtual goods that crypto gaming could enhance.

• a16z tracks which ecosystems generate the most pitch activity as a gauge of ecosystem health, with Solana showing increasing representation.

• During the Biden administration, a16z assumed DeFi would face severe headwinds and focused more on non-financial applications.

• The current regulatory environment has prompted a strategic shift toward financial applications as the most likely near-term success stories.

• Yahya characterized the current deal environment as balanced between infrastructure and applications, with a possible shift toward applications given infrastructure maturity.

Questions Answered

How did a16z crypto get started?

The crypto vertical at a16z emerged from Chris Dixon's individual investments in crypto dating back to the early 2010s, including the foundational Coinbase investment. In 2017, Dixon recruited Ali Yahya from Google X to help formalize this into a dedicated fund. Yahya had been following crypto since 2010 when he first encountered the Bitcoin white paper at Stanford, and he joined despite initially working on robotics at Google. The firm has since grown into one of the most prominent crypto-focused venture capital vehicles in the world, deploying capital across stages from very early seed investments to hundred-million-dollar later-stage positions.

What is a16z crypto's core investment thesis?

The firm's investment thesis centers on blockchains as a new form of computer with unique properties—specifically, the inversion of the traditional power relationship between software and hardware. In blockchain systems, software maintains power over hardware because the distributed network keeps individual hardware operators in check. This enables "computers that can make commitments" that users can trust because the logic is self-enforcing and free from outside interference. This property enables applications from hard money (Bitcoin's 21 million supply cap) to DeFi to potentially non-financial applications like decentralized social networks.

Why does a16z crypto believe Solana will succeed?

A16z's confidence in Solana stems from multiple factors: the technical achievement of sub-second, sub-cent transactions; the resilience displayed by both the founding team and community during the post-FTX period when many assumed the project was dead; and strong network effects operating at security, developer, application, and user levels. The firm has observed increasing representation of Solana-based projects in their pitch flow, indicating ecosystem health. Yahya emphasized that founder commitment during difficult periods—rather than cashing out when token prices rise—distinguishes lasting projects, and Solana's team demonstrated this commitment through the worst of the bear market.

Why haven't crypto games achieved mainstream adoption yet?

Multiple factors have prevented crypto gaming success despite significant investment and hype. The regulatory stigma around crypto caused user backlash whenever traditional game studios explored integrations, with players recoiling from anything associated with the space. Infrastructure limitations made blockchain transactions too expensive and slow for practical gaming use until recently. The thesis remains intact—players clearly want to purchase and own in-game items, as evidenced by Fortnite's billions in revenue—but execution has been premature. Yahya believes gaming adoption will come after stablecoins achieve mainstream success and legitimize the broader crypto ecosystem.

How should Solana capture the stablecoin opportunity?

Yahya advised that the Solana community should "lean in hard on winning stablecoin adoption" given the firm's conviction that stablecoins represent the most likely near-term killer application. While current dynamics present challenges—Circle's partnership with Coinbase aligns toward Base, and Tether isn't strongly positioned on Solana—the game isn't over. Potential stablecoin legislation could standardize issuance requirements and enable more players (banks, fintechs, asset managers) to become issuers. The goal should be ensuring this proliferation happens on Solana by being actively engaged in those conversations and building the necessary infrastructure.

What is the investment thesis behind Worldcoin?

A16z's Worldcoin investment addresses the growing challenge of distinguishing humans from AI on the internet. As AI generates unlimited human-seeming content, proof of humanity becomes increasingly valuable. Worldcoin uses iris scanning and other biometrics through its orb device to create privacy-preserving attestations of humanness via zero-knowledge proofs. Users receive a portable proof they can use across services—dating apps, social networks, any application wanting to verify human users. The WLD token enables an ecosystem including World Chain, where users can transact and access applications like the Morpho lending protocol.

Does a16z invest in public tokens or only private deals?

A16z crypto operates as a multi-stage fund with flexibility to invest across both private and public markets. When public token valuations appear attractive relative to fundamentals, or when markets unfairly discount a protocol's tokens, the firm will build positions—typically by partnering with founders and acquiring tokens from foundations or through negotiated arrangements. Recent examples include purchases of Layer Zero and Eigen tokens. The choice between private and public opportunities ultimately comes down to case-by-case assessment of opportunity and valuation rather than rigid constraints on investment type.

Why does a16z emphasize long-term investing over short-term trading?

Yahya argued that long-term investing is actually easier than short-term trading because short-term market dynamics are fundamentally unpredictable. Interest rates, political developments, and macroeconomic shifts create noise that only the largest macro hedge funds can consistently trade profitably. By contrast, backing great founders building fundamentally valuable technology becomes more predictable over longer horizons. The key enabler is fund structure designed to weather multiple cycles—by surviving to the point where the thesis plays out, long-term investors capture upside that short-term traders might miss due to interim volatility.

How does a16z think about infrastructure versus application investments?

Computing cycles typically alternate between infrastructure and application eras. Infrastructure development enables applications, which stress infrastructure in unexpected ways, creating demand for new infrastructure improvements. Yahya characterized the current moment as balanced with a slight skew toward infrastructure, but suggested the pendulum may be swinging toward applications now that infrastructure like Solana has achieved necessary performance levels. Rather than making top-down allocations between categories, the firm evaluates opportunities case-by-case, primarily focused on founder quality regardless of whether they're building infrastructure or applications.