Internet Social Markets
Internet Capital Markets Need A Social Layer
Kyle Samani's Internet Capital Markets explained how Solana is becoming the foundation for global financial infrastructure. But this vision is incomplete without acknowledging a fundamental truth: markets are inherently social institutions. Every trade is a relationship. Every price discovery is a conversation. Every market is a community.
When markets are small and local, we see their social nature first-hand: we know the participants, we build trust with real people, and we build relationships through engaging with the market. When markets are internet-scale, though, their social nature fades to the background. Specific moments (remember r/wallstreetbets?) remind us of their nature, but for the most part, they are faceless too fast to follow.
The artificial separation between financial and social infrastructure has created massive inefficiencies in how humans interact with markets and each other. When social relationships live in one place (Web2 platforms) and value flows in another (financial systems), we fragment the natural connection between social and financial capital. Solana isn't just building Internet Capital Markets – it's reuniting money and the social networks that power them at scale.
Markets Are Social Networks
The history of markets is the history of human relationships. The first markets were bazaars where merchants knew their customers by name. Stock exchanges began as coffee houses where traders built relationships of trust. Even today's algorithmic trading is shaped by human networks – who you know determines what information you have and what opportunities you can access.
Yet somehow, in the transition to digital markets, we lost this fundamental truth. We separated financial infrastructure from social infrastructure, treating them as distinct domains. Web2 social platforms became walled gardens of relationships, while financial systems became sterile pipes for moving value.
This is why social platforms have become trillion dollar businesses: they've captured and monetized the social relationships that should be flowing freely through markets. Facebook's two billion users aren't valuable because of Facebook's technology – they're valuable because that's where people's relationships are held hostage.
Why This Layer Belongs on Solana
Social infrastructure belongs on Solana for three fundamental reasons:
Value Lives Here: Solana is where users already manage their digital wealth, from DeFi positions to gaming assets to tokens and memes. Social connections should live where value flows.
Technical Requirements: Only Solana has the specific capabilities needed for social infrastructure at internet scale:
Sub-cent fees make frequent social interactions economically viable
Sub-second finality enables real-time social features
L1 scalability ensures social and financial data can coexist without fragmentation
Developer Experience: Through protocols like Tapestry, developers can access rich social context through a single API call. Every new application launches with immediate access to existing relationships.
What makes this truly powerful is that Solana enables social data to flow as freely as financial data. Just as DeFi protocols compose to create new financial primitives, social protocols can compose to create new forms of human connection. The network that hosts value should also host the relationships that give that value meaning.
Expanding TAM Through Universal Accessibility
The traditional social platform model creates value through scarcity and lock-in. The more users are trapped in a platform's social graph, the more valuable that platform becomes. But this model is fundamentally broken. Value comes from making social data more accessible, not less.
Tapestry is leading this expansion with a vision to fight on three fronts:
Universal Aggregation: Social signals from everywhere – Web2 platforms, other chains, and Solana itself – become accessible through a single API. Every follow, like, comment, and interaction becomes composable infrastructure. This isn't about competing with existing platforms; it's about making their data more valuable through universal accessibility.
Composable Infrastructure: When social data becomes true infrastructure, entirely new applications emerge:
Trading networks enhanced by social signals
Lending protocols incorporating reputation
Games merging social and economic relationships
Creators building direct fan relationships
AI-Powered Experiences: As AI collapses the time to create new applications from months to minutes, accessible social infrastructure becomes essential. Communities spawn custom tools instantly. Events create temporary economies. Memes transform into applications. All of this requires portable, accessible social data.
The key insight is that making social data universally accessible creates more value than keeping it locked up. When developers can access and build on social data with a single API call, they stop trying to build their own social graphs. When every new project can inherit rich social context from day one, network effects compound across the entire ecosystem. Tapestry wins not by building walls, but by building highways.
Internet Capital Markets Need A Strong Social Layer
This isn't just a $10T+ opportunity because we're aggregating social data – it's because we're fundamentally changing how markets function. When social capital flows as freely as financial capital, markets become more efficient in ways that weren't possible before:
Information flows through relationship networks faster than it can through centralized feeds
Reputation becomes portable capital that enhances every transaction
Communities can spawn markets as easily as they spawn conversations
Trading strategies can incorporate social signals that no single platform could see
This is already happening. Trading platforms are using social signals to enhance price discovery. Games are incorporating cross-platform reputation. Communities are spawning their own economies. But we're just at the beginning.
The vision of Internet Capital Markets requires this social layer. Markets are communities. Trading is relationships. Price discovery is conversation. By making social relationships as portable and composable as financial assets, we're not just building better markets – we're rebuilding how humans connect in digital space.
Just as the internet made information universally accessible, Solana makes relationships universally valuable. This is the missing layer of Internet Markets.