Why This Early Solana Investor Is Still All In | Viktor Fischer

This episode reveals why an early Solana investor who bought in at four cents is doubling down, arguing the L1 wars are over and Solana's path to $2,000 is paved by attracting traditional finance.

The Origin Story: Investing in Solana at 4 Cents

• Viktor Fischer recounts his entry into the Solana ecosystem, which began with a tip in 2018 to investigate a high-performance Layer 1 (L1) project in San Francisco, then called Loom.
• Rockaway X, a venture firm with deep roots in the Czech and Slovak crypto scenes, flew to meet the team at the 500 Startups incubator.
• The initial investment decision was solidified by the team's intense focus. Co-founder Anatoly "Toly" Yakovenko was initially too busy coding to meet, a signal to Viktor that the team was serious about building.
• Viktor recalls, "Tony didn't want to speak with us because he was just heads down coding with his Qualcomm team and so that's when we said okay this is great we are investing."
• Rockaway X invested in a combination of the 4-cent and 20-cent rounds. Shortly after, the project rebranded from Loom to Solana to avoid confusion with another Ethereum-based project.

Navigating Volatility: Conviction Through the Bear Market

• Viktor emphasizes that community strength, not just price, has been the core of his conviction. He points to key moments that tested the ecosystem but ultimately strengthened it.
• He recalls a 2019 call where Toly admitted they were "running out of money" with "no product market fit," yet the team's refusal to give up was a powerful indicator of their resilience.
• The 2021 NFT boom, powered by tools like Candy Machine, gave Solana its first major wave of traction by making it cheap and fast for anyone to launch a collection.
• The subsequent FTX collapse in 2022, which saw SOL's price crash below $10, was viewed not as a failure but as a prime opportunity. Viktor notes that the ecosystem thrives as an underdog, with crises bringing the community closer together.

The End of the L1 Wars

• Viktor presents a clear and decisive thesis: the competition among new base-layer blockchains is over. He argues that network effects have created an insurmountable moat for established players.
• The Framework: Rockaway X is no longer investing in new L1s. Viktor states, "When I speak with developers it's like either Base or Solana and I don't see why anyone would like consider another chain really."
• Ecosystem Moat: A new L1 would need years to build the necessary infrastructure that users and developers expect, including exchange support for direct off-ramps, wallet integrations, and a full suite of DeFi protocols (lending, DEXs, oracles).
• Strategic Implication: The venture capital game has shifted from making 1,000x returns on early L1 tokens to an "ownership game" in applications. Success now means leading a round and securing a significant stake (e.g., 10%) in a protocol with the potential to reach a billion-dollar valuation.

The Modern Solana Thesis: Targeting TradFi Investors

• Viktor’s updated thesis for Solana centers on attracting a new class of user: traditional finance (TradFi) investors. The key vehicle for this is DATs (Digital Asset Treasury companies)—publicly traded firms that hold crypto assets, offering exposure via traditional stock markets.
• Solana was lagging Ethereum in the DAT space, which has a daily trading volume of $3 billion compared to Solana's $110 million.
• The primary challenge is simplifying the complex crypto narrative for experienced capital markets investors who are unfamiliar with the technology.
• This involves moving beyond technical debates on "crypto Twitter" and creating clear, accessible messaging that resonates with a TradFi audience.

Explaining Solana to Wall Street

• To bridge the gap with institutional investors, Viktor focuses on simple, powerful analogies and value propositions, even bringing economist Dr. Arthur Laffer onto the board of a Solana DAT.
• The "Global NASDAQ": Laffer, the creator of the Laffer Curve, conceptualizes Solana as a "global NASDAQ" that operates at the speed of light, enabling instant, low-cost global investment without overnight settlement friction.
• High-Growth, Yield-Generating Asset: In an era of fiat debasement and impending negative real interest rates, Solana is pitched as a high-growth asset that also generates significant yield (7% staking, 10-12%+ with DeFi), a combination rarely found in traditional markets.
• This narrative shifts the focus from "store of value," which Viktor believes is not the right fit for a volatile asset like SOL, to its role as a performance-enhancing component in a diversified portfolio.

Valuation and Price Targets: The Path to $2,000 SOL

• Viktor outlines a clear, model-driven case for significant price appreciation for SOL, with targets of $900, $2,000, and $6,000.
• $900 Target (Short-term): This valuation would be achieved if Solana reaches Ethereum's current market cap, which he argues is justified given its superior on-chain metrics.
• $2,000 Target (Top-Down Model): This is based on the global tokenized asset market reaching $20-25 trillion by 2030. If Solana captures a 10% settlement share of this market, its implied market cap would be $1.5-1.9 trillion, translating to ~$2,000 per SOL.
• $2,000 Target (Bottom-Up Model): This model projects annual protocol revenue (fees, MEV, staking) of $30-50 billion by 2030. Applying a 30-50x valuation multiple, comparable to high-growth SaaS infrastructure, also leads to a market cap of $1.2-2 trillion.

Tokenization and On-Chain Infrastructure

• Viktor’s bullishness is rooted in a deep conviction that tokenization will disrupt inefficient traditional financial systems. He reveals that Rockaway X is far more than a VC, operating as an "on-chain Citadel" by actively building and running critical infrastructure.
• The Problem with TradFi: He shares a personal story of the immense friction in subscribing to his own regulated DeFi fund, requiring investors to mail physical, wet-ink signed passport copies to Liechtenstein.
• Active Participation: Rockaway X runs validators, on-chain market makers, and infrastructure for projects like D0ero, with VC investments being just the "cherry on the cake."
• Strategic Insight: This hands-on approach provides a ground-level view of the network's real needs and opportunities, informing their investment thesis in areas like private credit on-chain, which remains a massive, untapped market compared to its $3 trillion TradFi equivalent.

The Role of DATs in Scaling Solana's TVL

• While Crypto Twitter may have moved on, Viktor argues the true impact of DATs on Solana is yet to come and will be a major theme in 2026.
• The TVL Gap: Ethereum's price is supported by its TVL, which is 10 times higher than Solana's. After accounting for price differences, the actual asset gap is only 2x.
• DATs as a Bridge: DATs will act as a channel to close this gap by simplifying DeFi for TradFi investors. They can offer exposure to complex DeFi yields through a simple, regulated stock purchase.
• The 2026 Catalyst: The first full quarterly reports from Solana DATs will be released in early 2026. When institutional investors see the high, transparent yields generated on Solana, it will trigger a re-evaluation of the ecosystem and drive significant capital inflows.

Infrastructure Deep Dive: The D0ero Thesis

• Viktor highlights the critical importance of infrastructure projects like D0ero in solving core network inefficiencies.
• The Duplication Problem: An astonishing 80% of transactions received by Solana validators are duplicates, created by traders spamming the network to ensure their transactions are included.
• D0ero's Solution: D0ero uses specialized hardware (FPGA chips on Arista routers) to perform transaction de-duplication at the network's edge, removing massive amounts of noise before it hits the validators.
• The Latency Game: Rockaway X is working with the UAE government to build a data center in Abu Dhabi. Its strategic location between Frankfurt and Tokyo could significantly cut global latency for trading, though the current cost of internet there ($240,000/month for 100 Gbps) is a major hurdle.

The Creator Coin Meta: A New User Archetype

• Viktor shares his firsthand experience launching a creator coin on pump.fun, a platform for easily creating memecoins on Solana. This experiment revealed a completely new type of user with an extremely short-term mindset.
• After launching "hardcoin," he was shocked to see its market cap hit $4 million.
• He discovered the most successful trader on the platform had an average holding period of just four minutes.
• This user base gets anxious if they don't see returns within 24 hours, requiring constant updates and engagement. Viktor suggests pump.fun should evolve into an "Instagram-like" platform where creators build communities around their tokens rather than incentivizing constant new launches.

Conclusion

This conversation underscores that Solana's next growth cycle hinges on attracting institutional capital by simplifying its narrative and leveraging vehicles like DATs. Investors and researchers should monitor the growth in Solana's TVL and DAT performance as key indicators of this crucial, long-term shift beyond short-term market hype.