Original title: Solana Can't Host Conferences Anymore
Original author: @abhitejxyz
Compiled by: Peggy, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: In December 2025, after Solana Breakpoint 2025 concluded in Abu Dhabi, Abhitej, an entrepreneur who has long been deeply involved in the Solana ecosystem, wrote this article. As the co-founder of Filament Finance and a core builder of Bento.fun, he reflects on whether the builder is still truly at the center after the conference scales up, based on his firsthand experience of multiple Breakpoints.
The title may seem sharp, but it is not a denial of the event. Rather, it is a reminder from within the ecosystem: as Breakpoint has evolved from an early developer-led gathering into a global event on par with the F1 Grand Prix and Bitcoin MENA, with institutions, capital, and grand narratives constantly pouring in, are the true builders who "write code headfirst" being diluted in the process?
Unlike macro-level assessments from an external perspective, Abhitej focuses on factors that are difficult to quantify but determine the direction of the ecosystem—whether the culture remains open, whether the stage still belongs to the builders, and whether participation remains accessible. The article doesn't attempt to provide standard answers, but it reminds us that Solana's vitality has never lay in the stage or the narrative, but rather in the developers around the world who continuously, quietly, and genuinely build the product.
The following is the original text:
I attended the first Breakpoint in Lisbon, and four years later, I came to Abu Dhabi for the latest one. During that time, industry giants fell, the price of SOL went through rollercoaster rides more than once, and the Memecoin craze repeatedly tested the resilience of the entire ecosystem.
But by the time the Solana ecosystem began preparing for Breakpoint 2025, it had already established its place:
It holds a leading position in several key metrics, including number of transactions, application revenue, and DEX trading volume.
It possesses the most culturally conscious and user-friendly ecosystem.
To become the strongest, or at least one of the strongest, Builder ecosystem
@joeljohn's article, "Most used chain based on what?", also aptly points out Solana's dominant position in multiple dimensions recently.
All of this is happening against a backdrop of an extremely brutal cycle for retail investors. Arbitrageurs have squeezed value to near its limit, Altcoin as a whole are underperforming the market, and net developer inflows have plummeted. What this industry truly lacks is a spark of optimism, something to remind people that the crypto world itself is still beautiful.
I believe Breakpoint is exactly what lit that match.
When I walked into the Solana Breakpoint venue in Abu Dhabi, the first thing I felt was not excitement, but a movement that was taking place.
It wasn't the kind of noisy, chaotic excitement. It was more like an undercurrent. A flowing force.
This doesn't feel like entering a meeting. There's no tension, no deliberate social pressure, and no anxiety about "I have to be in the right room at the right time." It's more like a festival, a place where people aren't there to "extract value" from each other, but to truly celebrate "creation."
People are smiling, talking, and moving freely. Developers, creators, founders, and institutions—everyone is in their place, and the whole is not out of balance.
This sense of harmony was immediately apparent. No single group was overemphasized: institutions didn't dominate the narrative; creators weren't treated as mascots; and founders weren't elevated to unapproachable positions. Everyone seemed approachable.
This event itself is extremely rare.
The longer I stayed at Breakpoint, the more I felt that this was not accidental, but a result of deliberate design.
The agenda wasn't a top-down information bombardment: five-minute lightning speeches, debates, product demonstrations, or dialogues. It was concise, sharp, and high in information density. It aimed to make more people visible, rather than having a select few repeatedly occupy the stage. You could clearly sense that this wasn't a one-off inspiration, but the result of long-term iteration.
Breakpoints are not achieved overnight, but rather through years of practice, gradually uncovering "what truly works."
My brief conversation with @paarugsethi from Superteam India was enough to make me realize how deeply the Solana ecosystem considers culture and the founder community.
Dissolving elitism
But if there's one thing Solana does better than most ecosystems, it's that it successfully deconstructs elitism.
There is no hidden hierarchy here where "only a few voices matter." As long as you create something truly valuable, even if it's small in scale, you'll have a platform to showcase it.
This openness changes everything: it reduces fear, invites more people to participate, and ultimately creates momentum. And momentum compoundes continuously.
After speaking with more and more people, another characteristic became clear: within the Solana ecosystem, there exists a shared sense of direction. It's not a dogmatic consensus, but rather a state of "everyone moving forward together." There are navigators, signal providers, and individuals seen as compass points by others. Because of this, the ecosystem doesn't easily crumble.
In many ecosystems, people fight their own battles, their narratives conflict with each other, the gaps keep widening, and everyone endlessly argues about "how things should be," yet is reluctant to accept "what is working."
Solana took a different approach. If speculation worked, it was accepted. If it aligned with the behavior of the new generation of internet users, it was studied, not stigmatized. There was no moral superiority, no whitewashing. Even Memecoin, despite its chaotic and predatory phase, was seen as an acceleration experiment, a stress test for the internet capital markets.
The system crashed, some people took advantage of the situation, and the lessons were truly learned. Solana didn't pretend none of this happened; instead, it extracted the lessons from the "entire ecosystem." This acceptance, rather than accumulating resentment, created space for innovation.
The most striking impression this year is Breakpoint's extreme builder-first approach. The market has cooled down, prices are no longer frenzied, and the number of people seeking "100x returns overnight" has significantly decreased. But it is precisely at this time that true builders begin to shine.
DeFi appears to be more mature; infrastructure discussions are returning to reality: predictability of the block space, latency optimization, and how to make application execution cheaper and more reliable.
You can see this shift in specific products: Kalshi chose Solana as its tokenization infrastructure; Phantom supports the consumer-facing interface experience; Phoenix features perpetual contracts, Prop AMM, and novel market designs; experiments in AI, robotics, and privacy; hackathons, the Superteam project, and those still-rough but real early ideas. People come to listen to presentations to learn, not to ask, "How do you pump this token?"
This shift in energy is extremely important. It makes the entire meeting feel grounded, honest, and product-centric.
If I had to point out a problem, it would be that there are still some narrow-minded attitudes in the ecosystem—"If it's not Solana-only, it's not worth paying attention to."
This idea isn't unique to Solana, but it shrinks the pie. The real opportunity isn't winning a public blockchain war, but reshaping the entire technology stack. And that can only be achieved through collaboration, not strategic maneuvering.
Ironically, Solana doesn't need to be advertised. Anyone who walks into Breakpoint can feel it. This ecosystem doesn't need online mockery. The product, culture, builders, and momentum are already loud enough.
A "festival"
This brings me back to my initial conclusion: Solana is no longer suitable for "hosting meetings." Meetings are one-way, static, and bounded. What Solana is doing is more in line with the native form of the new generation of the internet: a festival, a celebration for builders. It's a space where culture, capital, experimental spirit, and beliefs collide.
And these "festivals" will only continue to grow: becoming more vibrant, more immersive, and more diverse. Every corner is adding new flavor to this emerging internet.
Breakpoint 2025 was one of the best conferences I've ever attended, and it clearly showed where Solana is headed.
PS: In my opinion, choosing Abu Dhabi as the venue is one of the key reasons why Breakpoint 2025 is so special.
