Solayer and the Crypto Travel Revolution: From Restaking to Real-World Experience

Throughout its development history, crypto has always been famous for its ability to generate yields. From DeFi in 2020 to the restaking trend a few years later, the ecosystem is not short of ways to "get rich on-chain." However, a lingering question remains: does this liquidity flow eventually reach real life? Stablecoins mostly stay idle in wallets. Staking assets help secure the network but rarely go beyond that. Capital in crypto is real, but the impact is quite "virtual". @solayer_labs wants to change this. By building a modular liquidity infrastructure on Solana, the project not only optimizes on-chain performance but also bridges the gap between digital yields and real-world experiences. The launch of Solayer Travel, combined with the Emerald Visa Card and the stablecoin sUSD, clearly demonstrates the ambition: to make crypto capital useful beyond the realm of speculation. Solayer Travel: Turning Yields into Journeys In mid-2025, Solayer launched Solayer Travel – a hotel booking platform directly integrated with the Emerald card. Users can access over 1 million hotels worldwide, with prices averaging 35% lower than traditional OTAs, and in some places, discounts of up to 60%. The important thing is: the entire financial cycle is maintained within the ecosystem. Users stake SOL → receive yield → convert to sUSD → spend on travel. The yield is no longer just a number on the DeFi dashboard, but becomes the cost for a real vacation. Emerald Card: The Gateway to Real Life The center of this experience is the Emerald Card, a Visa debit card directly integrated with on-chain balances. Unlike many previous attempts, the Emerald Card is non-custodial – users always retain control of their assets while still making global payments through the Visa network. In addition to travel, Emerald also serves daily shopping, subscription payments, family budget management through the sub-account feature, and spending control. When combined with Solayer Travel, the system fully demonstrates the closed loop: yield from staking → interest-earning stablecoin → actual spending. sUSD: Interest-Bearing Stablecoin The anchor point of the Solayer ecosystem is sUSD, a stablecoin backed by US government bonds. Unlike USDC/USDT, which are "stable but non-yielding", sUSD ensures value while also generating passive income. This advantage brings two major impacts: Attract cautious investors in the context of a risky market. Connect DeFi with traditional finance through a safe and reliable asset. As a result, users can smoothly transition between yield staking – stable income – and real spending without encountering barriers. InfiniSVM: Infrastructure for Expansion Behind user-oriented products is the technical foundation: InfiniSVM – a hardware-accelerated execution layer of the Solana Virtual Machine. In the devnet testing, InfiniSVM processed over 250,000 TPS, with a long-term goal of 1 million TPS. This throughput is not just to achieve a nice number, but to ensure stability for high-frequency DeFi, real-time gaming, and large-scale payments. In travel, card payments, or liquidity movement across rollups, this stability is vital. Infrastructure is only remembered when it fails – Solayer bets that hardware acceleration will make it "invisible" in a positive way. sBridge: Non-Custodial Liquidity Not only fast, liquidity must also be cross-chain flexible. That is why sBridge appears – the native bridge for SVM rollups. sBridge allows asset transfers in less than 1 second, using hardware-backed proofs and ensuring "exactly-once". Instead of the common risk of bridge hacks, Solayer aims to provide safety and efficiency so that capital always remains in the most profitable place, rather than getting stuck in silos. Promote the Ecosystem A strong infrastructure is just an experiment without users. To address this, Solayer has launched CreatorPad – an incubator program for developers to build on their stack. CreatorPad provides funding, priority processing on InfiniSVM, along with incentive tokens. Initial results: Sonic, gaming rollup, secured through Solayer's pool restaking. NFT campaigns distributed via Wormhole attract hundreds of thousands of users. Some DeFi protocols have integrated sUSD. This shows that the liquidity of Solayer is no longer "theoretical" but has begun to flow into practical applications. Transparent & Sustainable Tokenomics The $LAYER token has a total supply of 1 billion, with approximately 20% currently in circulation. The initial inflation rate is 8% per year and gradually decreases to 2% in the long term. From early on, the community has participated in governance. The SIP-1 proposal regarding the inflation curve was passed with an overwhelming support rate. This demonstrates the professionalism and cohesion between the team and the community, which is rarely seen in many young projects. LAYER has many uses: governance, InfiniSVM gas fees, CreatorPad rewards. Value is accumulated from various streams: staking, AVS, stablecoin demand, consumer payments. This is not a "marketing decoration" token, but a real infrastructure. Risks & Challenges Of course, big ambitions always come with risks: Token unlock: large unlock phases can create supply pressure. Deployment risk: achieving 1 million TPS is unprecedented. Bridge security: sBridge, although new, still has to prove itself over time. Competition: EigenLayer, Jito, and many other modular protocols are all dominating the market. These factors will be a test for Solayer's long-term vision. Why is Solayer Important? The difference of Solayer is changing the understanding of liquidity. Previously: static liquidity - locked in pool, staking validator, sitting idle in stablecoin. With Solayer: dynamic liquidity - generating yield, securing the network, cross-chain movement, paying for real-world services. In a cautious market, this is what investors, users, and organizations are looking for: efficiency, utility, and reliability. Conclusion: From Protocol to Platform Each crypto cycle has its game-changing names: Uniswap makes liquidity programmable. Lido makes staking liquid. EigenLayer makes security reusable. Solayer aims to make liquidity modular and integrated into life. From staking SOL → restake Solayer → receive sUSD → transfer via sBridge → trade super fast with InfiniSVM → spend with Emerald card. Closed loop, from blockchain security to hotel booking, from financial systems to everyday life. If Solayer succeeds, it will not just be a DeFi protocol anymore, but become the "operating system for liquidity" – quietly, efficiently, and indispensably. #BuiltonSolayer