Rethinking What a Blockchain Base Layer Needs to Power the Future of Finance

Every robust economy rests on a kind of invisible architecture a financial system that doesn’t just sit in the background but makes economic life possible. It moves money, manages risk, and connects opportunity with capital. We interact with it every day through things like mortgages, payrolls, and peer-to-peer payments, rarely pausing to consider the elegant network of trust, stability, and efficiency beneath the surface.

But what happens when that infrastructure no longer matches the speed of innovation around it? When finance that is built for paper checks and server racks struggles to keep pace with a world defined by real-time digital interaction?

This question isn’t hypothetical. It’s the core of why blockchain base layers matter.

At a basic level, a blockchain “base layer” is the foundational network that records transactions and enforces the rules of the system. It’s the digital equivalent of a financial operating system, the underlying infrastructure on top of which applications like payments, lending, trading, and asset ownership are built. Just as highways determine how traffic flows in a city, base layers determine how value moves in a digital economy.

In traditional systems, institutions like banks, exchanges, and clearinghouses shoulder trust and coordination. In blockchain systems, trust shifts into code and consensus, reimagining financial infrastructure as open, decentralized, and global. That shift isn’t just technical — it’s economic and social.

What Is the Purpose of a Financial System, Really?

Strip away the complexity, and every financial system exists to do three things well. It must build trust, allowing people and institutions to transact without knowing one another. It must provide stability, continuing to function during periods of stress, volatility, or rapid growth. And it must deliver efficiency, ensuring capital moves to where it’s needed with as little friction as possible. Any infrastructure (blockchain or otherwise) that hopes to support a real economy must meet these same standards.

Thinking Bigger Than Speed

To understand this transformation, consider the ongoing debate between two of the most influential blockchain networks today: Ethereum and Solana.

Ethereum, the pioneering smart-contract platform, has become the backbone of decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized applications. Its architecture prioritizes security and decentralization, offering composability (the ability for financial applications to easily plug into and build on one another) and modularity that developers trust. Even as transactions can be slower and more expensive by design, its network effects and institutional adoption remain strong and recent scaling solutions via Layer-2 rollups are expanding its performance envelope which move transactions off the main network while still relying on its security. (CryptoSlate)

Solana, on the other hand, was built from the ground up for speed and scalability. Using innovations like Proof of History alongside Proof of Stake— mechanisms that help the network agree on transaction order and validity without a central authority, Solana can process transactions in parallel at exceptional throughput and minimal cost. These characteristics attract developers building high-frequency applications, consumer-facing dApps, and real-time financial services. (Ledger)

Yet these differences aren’t simply about which is faster or cheaper. They reflect a deeper divergence over how financial infrastructure should function, who it should serve, how it should protect users, and what kinds of economic activity it should enable.

A Tale of Two Infrastructures

Take trust. In legacy finance, trust is outsourced: banks, regulators, custodians. In blockchain systems, trust is coded into the protocol, enforced by cryptographic consensus which are shared rules that allow thousands of independent computers to agree on what’s true. This shift enables permissionless access and composability across a global network but it also requires reconciling decentralization with performance.

Ethereum’s strength has been its credibility and neutrality. Institutional actors increasingly build on its ecosystem because its commitment to security and composability creates a durable foundation for tokenized assets, complex derivatives, and regulated financial products. (CryptoSlate)

Solana’s narrative is different: by optimizing for throughput and cost, the network has become a playground for real-time applications and a laboratory for pushing blockchain scalability. Its low fees and rapid finality make it appealing for everything from micropayments to gaming economics and volume-intensive trading. (Ledger)

Interestingly, the ecosystem itself is starting to bridge these worlds. Recently, Coinbase’s Layer-2 chain Base launched a Chainlink-secured bridge to Solana, enabling cross-chain liquidity and interoperability, a practical expression of an ecosystem that cannot be neatly segregated into silos. (Cointelegraph)

This kind of interoperability suggests the future of blockchain isn’t a single dominant chain but a network of networks each optimized for different economic niches, yet connected by shared infrastructure and open protocols.

It’s More Than Performance

At the most fundamental level, any system that seeks to underpin finance must answer these questions:

• Can it secure and move capital at scale?

• Can it support diverse economic activity beyond speculation?

• Does it offer a credible path forward as demand grows?

Ethereum’s modular stack and growing suite of Layer-2s are positioning it as the backbone for institutional and regulated finance. Solana’s performance orientation provides a platform for consumer-centric and real-time use cases. Both are evolving economies, not just technologies. (Nethermind)

The contest between them isn’t a zero-sum game. It reflects competing visions of how financial infrastructure evolves: one emphasizing security and composability, the other emphasizing speed and accessibility. Investors and builders must understand these distinctions because they influence who participates, what markets get built, and how capital flows.

Beyond Chains: The Future of Financial Infrastructure

Today’s blockchain debate mirrors a much older economic truth: infrastructure matters. Roads, ports, and railways shaped where commerce flourished. Just as importantly, invisible rails (banking systems, legal frameworks, and credit networks) determined who could participate in markets and how wealth was distributed.

Blockchains ask something deeper of us than “which is better.” They ask:

• What kinds of economic interactions do we want to enable?

• Who gets to build on these platforms?

• How do we design systems that are inclusive, resilient, and productive…not just fast?

Answering these questions requires more than technical benchmarks. It requires context, purpose, and a long-term lens.

Does This Ecosystem Resemble an Economy?

Ultimately, the question isn’t whether a base layer is “fast” or “cheap.” It’s whether it’s evolving into a functioning economy, complete with:

• A population of developers, users, investors, and intermediaries

• A range of financial services — DEXs, lending, staking, payments, RWAs

• Economic activity that’s productive, not purely speculative

• Governance that enables adaptability without chaos

Both Ethereum and Solana are on this path, though with different tradeoffs. One leans into modularity and public goods; the other into performance and simplicity. Both are building the foundations of internet-native capital markets.

The Investment Implication

If you’re investing in crypto, you’re not just buying tokens, you’re buying into economies. Understanding the strength, structure, and direction of the base layer underneath your investments isn’t optional…it’s everything.

As this ecosystem matures, the base layers we bet on today will shape what’s possible tomorrow. Let’s choose wisely.

You don’t need to be a crypto native to care about these questions. Wherever capital flows, infrastructure shapes outcomes, and the choices being made in blockchain today echo the same choices societies have always faced when building the systems that govern economic life.

Where to Go Next

If this conversation resonates with the way you think about capital and economic infrastructure, here are a few places to explore further:

👉 More Than Profit Podcast — where we explore the intersection of capital, values, and system design (link to AV podcast).
👉 AV Resources & Downloads — where we unpack capital frameworks and thesis thinking that apply blockchain thinking to broader financial infrastructure.

Because in the end, if financial infrastructure is going to change who participates in shared prosperity, it can’t just be about speed. It has to be about trust, stability, and equitable access — the very principles that make any economy work.