Solana took its advertising all the way to Shanghai's Bund.
On the evening of October 14, the riverside curtain wall of the Citigroup Tower in Lujiazui, Shanghai lit up with the Solana logo, and the official account also posted a night-view video captioned with the pinyin "ni hao shanghai." Across the Huangpu River, this leading public blockchain in the crypto industry greeted Shanghai in a very direct way.
Also drawing attention was news of Shanghai office space. Social media posts by Solana team members and foundation executives showed images of the Shanghai office. In parallel, there were offline events organized by Solana officially: Accelerate China will begin in Shanghai on October 16, followed by Hangzhou on the 18th, Shenzhen on the 20th, and Beijing on the 22nd.
Viewed together—the advertising, the office space, and the four-city events—this appearance in the Chinese market is indeed quite concentrated. For those accustomed to crypto projects keeping a low profile within the mainland, this picture inevitably prompts speculation: has the wind changed? Are there new opportunities for Web3 in China? What does Solana hope to gain by committing resources to engaging with Chinese teams? And for Chinese entrepreneurs, what can remain after establishing contact with it?
All these questions come down to one sentence: What business is Solana actually here in Shanghai to do?
Public blockchains need customers too
Solana is a globally known blockchain public chain project, which can be simply understood as a public blockchain network that allows different teams to develop and run applications on it; SOL is its native token. But when a public chain brand comes to China, the people it engages with are not necessarily only those who buy tokens. Engineers writing code, entrepreneurs developing products, and enterprises with overseas customers may all be parties it hopes to connect with.
Suppose a Chinese team builds software for overseas users and needs to handle account permissions, digital asset records, or access some on-chain service in a permitted market. If it becomes familiar with a certain chain's tools early on and knows the service providers on that chain, then when making product choices later, that chain will naturally be more likely to enter the candidate list.
My understanding is that Solana's visit to China this time is aimed at winning over the next batch of teams capable of building products. By letting Chinese entrepreneurs know it and become familiar with it, and by making them willing to choose it when developing products for the global market, this investment has a chance to turn into a long-term ecosystem advantage.
Many people look at a public chain first by token price, then by trading volume, and finally by what popular projects it has. These of course affect market attention. But from a business perspective, a chain must also continuously answer one question: why would the next startup be willing to use you?
You can think of a public chain ecosystem as an industrial park that hopes to attract enterprises to move in. The park builds infrastructure, holds events, and provides support, hoping good teams will come in. A public chain likewise provides development tools, technical support, and funding opportunities, hoping teams will build products on its network. The legal nature of the two differs, but the logic of competing for enterprises and projects has something in common.
The Solana Foundation's publicly disclosed support programs include milestone-based grants and calls for specific projects. Applicant teams need to explain the project's value to the network, the use of funds, and the stage results. These arrangements themselves show that attracting developers requires sustained investment.
When money is spent, what is it expected to bring in return? From the perspective of ecosystem development, it is more usable products and the demand for services that forms around those products. Applications attract users, users bring usage, and other teams may continue building around existing products. Only when this process can run can a chain have the opportunity to become infrastructure that enterprises are willing to adopt over the long term.
The commercial interests here fall on different participants. Companies that develop applications earn product and service revenue, validators that maintain the network receive corresponding compensation under the network's rules, and the foundation promotes ecosystem development by supporting developers. Transactions on the Solana chain require fees to be paid in SOL, but the relationship among usage volume, the revenue of each party and the token price is not a simple one-to-one correspondence.
Therefore, when I see it placing advertisements and holding events in Shanghai, I am more inclined to understand this as investment aimed at building brand awareness and business connections. As for whether it can bring in valuable projects, that depends on the cooperation and products that follow. A light show can make people remember a name, but sustained enterprise use still depends on products and services.
The scope and boundaries of business promotion in the Chinese mainland
As we know, a public chain has both a technical network and a token. Which part of it is promoted in China, and what activities are carried out, requires breaking down the specific content.
Introducing technical architecture to developers, demonstrating development tools, and discussing how software is deployed and how applications run—such exchanges have normal room for technical promotion. China has a large number of engineers, product teams and enterprises currently doing business in overseas markets, and it is not difficult to understand the commercial motive for public chain teams to be willing to engage with them.
But if an event shifts from talking about development to calling on people present to purchase tokens, promising returns from holding tokens, or directing everyone to enter trading platforms, then the nature of the event has changed. Between developer exchanges and solicitation of token investment, there is a line that must be maintained. The specific content of brand promotion must also comply with advertising and other rules.
Chinathe Chinese mainlandregardingblockchainthe regulation of the industry,Historically,the approach has been to manage technology applications and virtual-currency-related financial activities separately.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Administration of China have issued guiding opinions on promoting blockchain technology applications and industrial development, supporting technology research and development and integrated applications; virtual currency trading and speculation, token issuance and financing, and similar activities are, by contrast, strictly restricted.
Thus, encouraging blockchain technology and prohibiting illegal financial activities related to virtual currency can both hold true at the same time. Speaking about technology to developers and selling tokens to investors are not the same thing. The assessment should focus on what the activity presents, what it guides participants to do, and what services it actually provides thereafter.
From this perspective, Solana's coming to China to seek developers has an understandable commercial logic. A more valuable observation on this matter is whether it can support Chinese teams in building applications for the global market, and how such cooperation unfolds.
Develop in China, Do Business Globally
For entrepreneurs in mainland China, the more practical question they may care about is: can I use a public blockchain such as Solana to develop products for the global market?
Using public blockchain technology is not in itself the same as engaging in virtual currency trading business. Chinese teams may study open-source code, develop software, and seek product demand globally. The compliance assessment of a specific project must follow the functions it provides, the markets it enters, and the users it serves.
For example, one team develops an on-chain data analytics tool for overseas enterprises and charges through software subscriptions; another team develops a trading product offering token swaps, asset custody, or yield services. Even if both develop on Solana, the business obligations involved are very different. The former needs to address issues such as data and contracts, while the latter must further assess local financial regulatory and licensing requirements.
Entrepreneurs should first select the market they will actually serve, and then design the product. Which users may use it, which functions must be undertaken by licensed institutions, and who collects and safeguards funds should all be determined before launch. A business permitted in one overseas market may not be replicable in another country or region.
Particularly, mainland Chinese users must be handled seriously and prudently. If a product provides virtual currency exchange, trading intermediation, token issuance and financing, or similar services to users within mainland China, it will encounter business expressly prohibited under current regulation. Incorporating the company overseas or making the contract subject to foreign law cannot directly resolve the issue of providing services within mainland China.
Therefore, writing the target customers in a business plan is not enough; the product and operations must also keep pace at the practical level. How user onboarding is conducted, which regions' users cannot use certain functions, whom Chinese-language promotion targets, and whether the mainland team undertakes responsibilities such as soliciting trading users and processing orders—these actions must be consistent with the business boundaries. If the team also plans to issue its own tokens, or to tokenize rights in mainland assets and issue them overseas, this involves separate regulatory requirements.
Returning to the question at the outset, what business does Solana want to do in Shanghai?
In my view, it hopes that Chinese developers and startup teams will build more products on its network and then bring those products to global markets. For a public blockchain, long-term competitiveness comes only from being able to continuously attract teams to develop and keep users engaged.
For Chinese entrepreneurs, there are opportunities here worth pursuing. Use global technology tools to solve real customer problems, enter different markets, and embed local compliance requirements into products and operations. China's restrictions on financial activities related to virtual currencies and Chinese teams' participation in global blockchain technology innovation are two matters that need to be understood separately.
What I would rather see is that, after this excitement, Chinese teams use these new connections to genuinely sell their products overseas and acquire customers who pay on an ongoing basis. For Solana and these entrepreneurs, that is what makes for a business truly worth pursuing seriously.
