Beyond humans: Lily Liu says Solana is building the payment rails for the 'AI machine economy'

FinanceShareShare this articleCopy linkX iconX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailBeyond humans: Lily Liu says Solana is building the payment rails for the 'AI machine economy'

At Consensus Miami 2026, Solana Foundation President Lily Liu argued that stablecoin adoption by firms like Western Union validates Solana’s role as financial infrastructure for both human and machine economies.

By Jamie Crawley, AI Boost|Edited by Oliver Knight May 6, 2026, 8:35 a.m. 2 min readMake preferred on

What to know:

• Lily Liu said Western Union adopting Solana for stablecoin payments reflects the network’s speed, low costs and neutrality as financial infrastructure.
• Liu argued blockchain rails are essential for AI agents and “machine-to-machine” commerce because traditional card networks cannot support micropayments economically.
• She said crypto’s next major evolution could be “internet capital markets,” giving companies and even sovereigns broader access to global capital formation.

Solana Foundation president Lily Liu said growing adoption of stablecoins by major corporations is validating blockchain’s evolution into global financial infrastructure, while also laying the groundwork for AI-driven “machine economies.”

Speaking at Consensus Miami 2026 on Tuesday, Liu pointed to recent announcements involving Meta and Western Union integrating stablecoin payments on Solana as evidence that large enterprises increasingly view blockchain rails as practical infrastructure rather than speculative technology.

“It’s not new,” Liu said, referencing Visa’s decision in 2023 to build stablecoin settlement capabilities on Solana following what she described as an “extensive objective review” of blockchain networks.

“Fast and cheap is a no-brainer for payments,” she said, adding that enterprises also need deep liquidity, developers and a broad ecosystem of applications surrounding those payment rails.

Liu described Western Union’s move onto blockchain infrastructure as a particularly meaningful milestone for the crypto industry. “When I first came into this industry in 2014, Western Union was always the white whale crypto,” she said.

Exploring the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence, Liu argued that blockchain-based payments are uniquely suited for “agentic commerce,” where AI agents transact autonomously with other machines and services.

Traditional internet payment systems remain heavily dependent on credit cards, which make micropayments economically impractical because of interchange fees, Liu said. Blockchain rails, by contrast, enable sub-dollar transactions and real-time payment streaming.

“The vast majority of transactions that happen on the internet are actually of microtransaction value,” Liu said. “You literally cannot process those individual transactions because you’ve got to put them through credit cards.”

Liu also defended the Solana ecosystem’s recent interventions following security incidents involving projects such as Vault and Drift, saying preserving industry confidence sometimes outweighs competitive rivalries inside decentralized finance.

Looking ahead, Liu argued the industry is still underestimating blockchain’s ultimate role. Rather than functioning primarily as generalized technology platforms, she said blockchains are fundamentally “financial rails first and foremost.”

She added that crypto’s longer-term promise could extend beyond payments into what she called “internet capital markets,” allowing companies and sovereign entities worldwide to access global capital formation more directly.

Consensus Miami 2026AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.

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