Kyle Samani's about-face, one of the biggest believers in web3, has also left the industry

In the westernmost part of the Hidaka mountains in Hokkaido, Japan, at the Iwanai resort, Multicoin co-founder Kyle Samani is standing on a snow-covered ridge, wearing a helmet, and carrying a snowboard.

This is the most recent tweet from Kyle Samani since announcing his departure from Multicoin.

A few days ago, he had just deleted a tweet that said, "Crypto is not as interesting as many (including myself) once imagined. I used to believe in the Web3 vision and dApps, now I no longer do. Blockchain is fundamentally just an asset ledger."

Although quickly deleted, many people still saw it.

Later, Kyle provided a more temperate explanation in an open letter: "This is a bittersweet moment. Multicoin has been one of the most important and rewarding experiences of my life. But I also look forward to taking a break to explore new technological frontiers."

Multicoin's other co-founder, Tushar Jain, wrote in a letter to LPs: "Kyle's interests have expanded from cryptocurrency to emerging technology areas such as AI, longevity tech, robotics, and more. He wants to take some time to systematically explore these directions."

Kyle Samani's departure seems to have once again made the industry acutely aware: those who were among the first to advocate for Web3 are also starting to waver.

The Golden Age of FTX and Multicoin

In the crypto VC circle, Kyle Samani is one of the most prolific writers among investors, with long-form articles, research reports, open letters, and trend analyses, one after another. The "three mega theses" proposed by him and the Multicoin team have influenced a generation of practitioners' understanding of native crypto value.

Many know Multicoin as one of the most ardent supporters of the Solana ecosystem, but what many do not know is that Multicoin was not originally a "Solana-aligned" institution.

In 2017–2018, Multicoin's core focus was actually on EOS. At that time, EOS was marketed as a "performance killer" and "Ethereum killer," emphasizing high TPS, low latency, and suitability for large-scale applications. Multicoin was also one of its staunchest supporters, with early heavy bets and deep involvement in ecosystem development.

But the result is well known: governance failure, ecosystem hollowing, developer attrition, financialization. EOS is essentially declared a failure.

For Multicoin, this was a setback approaching a "faith-based" level. If they bet wrong on the next generation public chain, this institution will basically be marginalized by the market.

So after the collapse of EOS, Multicoin began extremely cautiously searching for the "next chain that can truly run a financial system."

From 2019 to 2020, FTX developed very rapidly. But SBF faced a reality: Ethereum was too slow, too expensive. Matching, clearing, derivatives, on-chain settlement, none of it could scale. He needed a chain: extremely high TPS, extremely low latency, suitable for high-frequency financial systems, capable of handling exchange-level traffic.

At this point, Kyle was already systematically researching Solana, and Solana's characteristics happened to align with SBF's needs.

One night, Kyle called SBF directly in the middle of the night. They talked for a long time. The core of the conversation revolved around one question: Could Solana handle real transactional throughput?

This phone call was viewed by many insiders as a turning point for Solana.

What happened later was actually quite "Wall Street." SBF didn't fully trust Kyle. He chose to verify it himself, so they launched a large number of junk transactions on Solana as an attack-style stress test to see if Solana would crash.

The result was: Solana withstood the pressure.

What happened next is something we are mostly aware of, FTX entered the scene in full force. FTX/Alameda bought a large amount of SOL, invested in Solana ecosystem projects, provided liquidity, market-making, and listed related assets. Multicoin continued to accumulate, endorse externally, research, promote, and conduct institutional roadshows, and so on.

Early core projects in the Solana ecosystem are almost inseparable from the FTX/Alameda group and Multicoin group, forming a de facto alliance. They promoted together, provided resources together, pumped together, and built the ecosystem together.

With their help, Solana emerged as a top-tier public chain, FTX gradually solidified its position as the top exchange, and Multicoin also became a top VC. At the peak of their success, they achieved great things together, and many still reminisce about that golden era.

And in the FTX era, Multicoin is still holding on to SOL, rebuilding the narrative.

Even after leaving, Kyle Samani is still betting on SOL, emphasizing his continued bullishness on cryptocurrency, especially Solana, and plans to maintain personal involvement. After all, as a Multicoin co-founder, he has managed around $5.9 billion in assets, but his most successful label has always been: the earliest believer in Solana.

Now, he continues to serve as the Chairman of Forward Industries. This company holds the largest SOL treasury in the market. He also tweeted: "I intend to increase my position in FWDI, essentially increasing my SOL exposure. I remain super bullish on SOL, super bullish on cryptocurrency."

Even as he exits the stage, he is still standing on Solana.

Multicoin is also more like a "narrative factory"

Founded in 2017, Multicoin gave itself a very rare positioning — Thesis-driven VC, a thesis-driven investment firm.

This means that Multicoin is also more like a "narrative factory."

Anticipating structural opportunities, packaging opportunities into trends through theses, and then turning trends into reality with capital. Web3, DeFi, PayFi, data sovereignty, AI+Crypto, privacy... Behind many mainstream narratives we have seen over the years, we can almost always see Multicoin's shadow.

If asked which narrative has been most successful for Multicoin over the years? The answer is DeFiPIN, according to Ben Lawsky.

Starting in 2019, Multicoin has been discussing a question repeatedly: Why should blockchain only serve finance? Can it directly transform the real world's infrastructure? So, they proposed the prototype of DePIN: using tokens to incentivize driving physical network construction.

Turning real-world assets into on-chain production materials.

DePIN's success is largely not due to technological breakthroughs, but because Multicoin explained it thoroughly.

In blogs, summits, and research reports, they kept outputting: what projects qualify as DePIN; what projects are fake DePIN; how to assess sustainability; how to avoid Ponzi schemes. Slowly, the entire industry began discussing issues in their way.

Subsequently, more and more capital began to enter the scene.

Helium, Hivemapper, GEODNET... One groundbreaking project after another emerged within the Solana ecosystem. Helium deployed over 600,000 hotspots in just 30 months, directly competing with traditional telecom networks. Hivemapper crowdsourced devices to rebuild the mapping system. These projects became the blueprint for DePIN.

By 2025–2026, DePIN had become a standard track for institutions. Grayscale included it in their research report, estimating the market size to be in the billions of dollars. The earliest bet on the system was made by Multicoin.

In addition to DePIN, Multicoin has been emphasizing a longer-term proposition over the years: Who owns the data? In the Web2 world, data belongs to the platform, users are merely products, and information flow is controlled by banks, tech giants, and credit institutions. Multicoin's core insight is: If Web3 is meaningful, it must be reflected at the data layer. Individuals must regain control of identity, privacy, behavioral data, and credit information. Otherwise, so-called "decentralization" is just server swapping. They have strategically invested in numerous privacy computing, encryption protocol, and data marketplace projects, such as Zama.

Have We Failed?

Just as Kyle exited the scene, another tweet was repeatedly reshared within the community.

From Vitalik.

When discussing the Ethereum L2 ecosystem, he used an almost introspective tone: "The progress of L2 entering Stage 2 is much slower and much more difficult than we expected. Meanwhile, L1 itself continues to scale."

Another version of this statement could be: We're sorry, we have failed. Not a technical failure. A narrative failure.

Within this framework, Multicoin was once one of the most exceptional narrative designers. They diligently, systematically, and rigorously constructed an entire Web3 worldview. But today, even Kyle himself is starting to say: Perhaps blockchain is fundamentally just an asset ledger.

So, what can blockchain really do? A decade has passed, and although we haven't found the right answer yet, fortunately, we have at least ruled out one wrong answer.

As Kyle departs, an era comes to an end, but we may also be on the cusp of a new era.

Because at the same time, there are still people, including Vitalik, who are holding the line in this industry.

Over the past decade, Bitcoin has gone through countless "it's over" moments: Mt. Gox, the 94 Ban, ICO bubble burst, 312, FTX... Each time, the market pronounced it dead; each time, it slowly climbed back.

The narrative will fail, the cycle will end, the capital will retreat.

But as long as there are people willing to bet time on the tech, reputation on the system, this industry will not truly reset.