Is Solana expected to become an independent? AI agents paid with Solana? Wall Street Crazy Raises $1 Billion: What Happened to Solana?

Original author：AI悟空说

Original source：https://www.youtube.com/embed/V1ebpF8VC8I

The video uses the macro perspective of a senior blockchain investor, combined with the latest news such as the Pay.sh service jointly launched by the Solana Foundation and Google Cloud, the upcoming launch of the Solana "Alpenglow" consensus upgrade, and the US spot Solana ETF asset size exceeding US$1 billion, to provide a multi-dimensional interpretation of Solana's development trend in 2026. Pay.sh allows AI agents to use Solana stable currency to pay for Google Cloud and community API calls on demand. Each call only costs a few cents. It adopts the x402 protocol and machine payment protocol, and is connected to mainstream AI services such as Gemini and OpenAI Codex and blockchain data platforms such as Helius and Dune. This cooperation marks the first time Solana has achieved infrastructure-level integration with a mainstream cloud service provider in the field of AI agency payment, opening up the imagination of the settlement layer of the "agency economy". At the technical level, the Firedancer independent client has been running stably for more than 100 days. The Alpenglow upgrade plan will compress the final transaction confirmation time from 12.8 seconds to 100 to 150 milliseconds. In conjunction with the client diversity strategy, Solana will move towards an institutional-level financial infrastructure. However, there is a significant divergence between price performance and fundamentals: the SOL token has retraced approximately 71% from its high point, and network revenue has dropped 68% year-on-year. However, spot ETFs have bucked the trend and have inflows of approximately US$1.45 billion, with approximately 49% held by investment advisors. Goldman Sachs, Electric Capital and other institutions continue to increase exposure. In terms of supervision, the SEC and CFTC jointly defined SOL as a "digital commodity", providing a safe haven for staking and airdrops, clearing obstacles for institutionalization. In terms of competition, developer activity in the entire industry has dropped by 75%, but Solana’s core developer retention rate is relatively high. The monthly stablecoin transaction volume exceeds 650 billion U.S. dollars, and the monthly revenue of DePIN’s seven major projects is nearly 2.9 million U.S. dollars. Real economic activities continue to expand. The article concludes by pointing out that the core challenge facing Solana is "narrowing the gap between activity and value capture." In the future, we need to pay attention to variables such as Alpenglow's online stability, Firedancer validator adoption rate, Pay.sh user retention, ETF net inflows and rebalancing of FTX sell-offs. Overall, Solana is going through a transformation period in which technology upgrades and application implementation are paralleled. Short-term prices are under pressure but long-term infrastructure value is accumulating.