Solana Could Bring Hundreds of Millions to Crypto Unknowingly, Says Investor Mike Dudas

Solana could bring hundreds of millions of people into crypto without most of them realizing they are using a blockchain, investor Mike Dudas said on a recent episode of Decrypt's Fomo Hour podcast.

Dudas, co-founder of crypto venture firm 6th Man Ventures and an early backer of Pump.fun and various other Solana projects, said the network's advantage is the range of activity it supports.

“The reason I think Solana is in a great position is because it is sort of the everything chain of trading and money movement and settlement,” he told Decrypt. “So it’s performant, it’s flexible, and it’s multi-use case.”

Dudas said consumer apps have made crypto easier to use by hiding many of its technical elements. Users can now fund accounts through services such as Apple Pay without handling wallets or interacting directly with a blockchain.

“I think that’s how most people are going to experience ‘on-chain’ moving forward,” he said.

Dudas argued that Solana’s less visible infrastructure—including round-the-clock availability, deep liquidity, low fees, and near-instant settlement—makes those consumer products possible.

“The unsexy stuff enables the stuff that people use,” he said.

Corporate-backed blockchains face different pressures, Dudas said, pointing to Coinbase’s Base and Robinhood Chain. He argued that both companies have an incentive to direct users toward products that generate revenue.

Dudas also said he supported efforts to reduce Solana’s token issuance—a topic that’s making the rounds of late as calls to reduce inflation in both the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems intensify.

“The notion that you need massive amounts of inflation for security has been overdone,” he said, calling the latest proposal “reasonable.”

Solana validators are considering two measures bundled under SGP-0003. The proposals would accelerate reductions in new SOL issuance and increase the amount of SOL burned through network fees. If it goes through, it could result in the kind of supply-size squeeze investors would likely benefit from, assuming demand stays steady or increases.

Dudas said Solana’s meme coin ecosystem also proved more resilient than much of the crypto market during the downturn, arguing that the network’s willingness to support uses ranging from speculative tokens to stock trading has become one of its strengths.

“The beauty of Solana is that the chain supports all of these different use cases,” he said. “As much crap as the Solana Foundation gets, and as much crap as I sometimes give it, they unequivocally and vocally support all of these broad use cases—and you can see it.”