Introduction and Background
Thomas opens this episode of Solana Weekly with Gaius, CEO of The Vault and founder of The Library, describing him as an OG in the Solana space and an angel investor. Gaius humbly pushes back on the “OG” label, explaining he only arrived during the 2021 NFT season—late compared to true veterans.
What brought Gaius to Solana wasn’t speculation but infrastructure. Coming from a traditional finance background working in derivatives on trading floors, he was drawn to crypto’s potential as superior settlement infrastructure compared to legacy systems like Euroclear. After experimenting with PancakeSwap on Binance Smart Chain and Uniswap on Ethereum in July 2021, he tried Raydium on Solana and immediately recognized it as the superior product. He still has a spreadsheet called “The Solana Pivot” documenting his initial research and first purchases.
The NFT Era and Community Building
The conversation turns nostalgic as they discuss the 2021 NFT boom on Solana. Gaius describes his strategy of building a personal index—owning a few NFTs from every major collection, tracking floor prices on Solana Floor. Projects like Okay Bears went from 1-2 SOL to 100 SOL in days. Thomas shares his own origin story: minting a neon Gecko (his first Solana NFT), selling it for 10x within an hour, and becoming completely hooked on the ecosystem.
They reminisce about legendary moments: someone buying the Monke DAO King for $1.3 million during a live town hall, another collector “sweeping the ceiling” by buying all the most expensive Thugbirdz instead of the floor. The same faces appeared across every Discord, creating tight-knit social bonds. Gaius notes that by late 2021, you could predict a project’s success by seeing which known collectors were buying—and when those faces were absent, it was a red flag.
These communities became crucial during the post-FTX collapse. While SOL dropped to $8 and the broader crypto world wrote off Solana, the Discord communities kept showing up, making memes, supporting each other through the trauma. Gaius identifies two groups that kept the lights on: these engaged communities and the validator operators who continued running nodes despite collapsing activity.
The Philosophy: Stop Trading
A central theme emerges repeatedly: most people should stop trading. Gaius acknowledges buying books on technical analysis when younger but now dismisses it as essentially meaningless in crypto. He argues that if you can hold a chart upside down and the patterns still “work,” something is fundamentally broken with the methodology. Price should ultimately connect to business performance, not patterns like “golden crosses” or “rising doji.”
His recommendation is straightforward: DCA into SOL, stake it, and leave it alone for years. He references “Cobie’s triangle” (from Crypto Cobain)—70-80% in your L1, some allocation to other conviction plays, and only 5% for speculation. The hardest part isn’t making smart trades; it’s doing nothing. Sitting on your hands while an asset appreciates 7-10% annually through staking yields alone is incredibly difficult for crypto participants who feel compelled to constantly “make moves.”
Gaius expresses frustration at seeing people lucky enough to be early in Solana waste their position chasing leverage trades and meme coins. The opportunity to build generational wealth exists simply by holding infrastructure through a decade-long adoption cycle. What feels “slow” to crypto natives is already breakneck speed compared to traditional markets. He wishes more people would stop posting P&L screenshots and just appreciate the golden opportunity in front of them.
Thomas agrees, noting his Twitter feed has become nearly unusable—dominated by people making and losing fortunes overnight on meme coins. They both acknowledge the entertainment value of throwing small amounts at speculation, but emphasize keeping those bets to amounts you’re comfortable losing while the bulk of holdings remain staked and untouched.
The Vault: Community Validators and Token Innovation
The Vault launched in 2024 (roughly a year ago, though Gaius admits the timeline gets muddled) with a clear mission: stake to community-operated validators. The team recognized that the communities and validators who survived post-FTX deserved support, so they created a liquid staking token that directs approximately 9,000 SOL per validator to community-anchored nodes. Currently managing 1.6 million SOL in TVL, communities can apply through a decentralized board that verifies legitimacy.
Beyond staking mechanics, The Vault is experimenting with token distribution. Rather than airdropping free tokens—which Gaius views as treating equity carelessly—they award points that grant the right to buy tokens at a discount. Users still need skin in the game, essentially turning early participation into a fundraising mechanism. The first expiration window arrives at the end of September.
This approach reflects Gaius’s long-held belief that tokens must reward holders through cashflow or the promise of future cashflow. Without connecting business performance to token value, you’re left with “branded paper”—worthless unless you believe in an “attention economy” where tokens appreciate simply because others might buy them. He’s been tweeting about the necessity of dividends, buybacks, or revenue sharing since 2021, insisting protocols need to take their token economics as seriously as equity in traditional companies.
The Library: A No-Price-Talk Community
Founded in 2022, The Library operates under one strict rule: no trading or price discussion. The Discord focuses on tokenomics, product strategy, go-to-market execution, and helping founders build. It’s become a refuge for protocol founders tired of “wen token” questions, traditional finance professionals who find the culture familiar, and anyone exhausted by constant speculation.
By explicitly defining what they’re not—a trading chat—The Library created a stronger sense of identity than most communities achieve through positive statements alone. When newcomers try discussing charts, they typically leave quickly because nobody engages.
They’re launching a 1-of-1 NFT collection with Utopia, auctioning pieces to raise funds. Proceeds get staked through The Library’s validator, with earnings reinvested into companies via a syndicate structure. Rather than a traditional fund where a group makes collective decisions, individual Library team members invest in deals and write up their thesis. Other members can opt in or pass based on their own research. It’s angel investing with built-in community support—though Gaius emphasizes most angel deals go to zero, so this is play money territory.
His role has become listening to talented developers explain what they’re building during weekly meetings. For someone who came to crypto for infrastructure, getting front-row access to builders working on Solana’s next generation of products is more exciting than watching charts.
Developer Culture and the Next Wave
Both hosts celebrate Solana’s developer-first culture. During the bear market, many developers kept building in their free time—nights and weekends—because they genuinely cared about the ecosystem’s success. This passion can’t be replicated by corporate development teams working for paychecks. The protocols dominating today—Jupiter, Tensor, Kamino—were heads-down throughout 2022-2023 when everything felt hopeless.
Gaius mentions the Backpack team specifically: they lost 90% of their treasury on FTX and kept building anyway. Now they operate one of the largest centralized exchanges. They deserve every success coming their way.
The challenge ahead is maintaining this grit as the ecosystem matures and early builders gain wealth. Solana must avoid becoming like Ethereum—too expensive, too elitist, where having money makes people stop hustling. The tone gets set from the top: Anatoly (Toly) constantly challenges developers on Twitter about technical details, pushing everyone to ship meaningful improvements rather than incremental updates. When Solana announces something new like Firedancer or Agave, it’s not 10% better—it’s 100x better.
With changing government attitudes toward crypto and regulatory clarity improving, real talent is now willing to risk their reputations building on Solana. These new developers are being welcomed by veterans who spent years tinkering on the side, creating a powerful mix of fresh perspective and institutional knowledge.
Ecosystem Maturation and Looking Forward
The recent Accelerate conference in New York symbolized Solana’s transition. People wore suits without irony. The Stripe crypto executive spoke on stage. It felt like a traditional finance conference that happened to be about blockchain—mature, professional, legitimate. This stands in stark contrast to 2021’s scrappy NFT community vibe.
Gaius believes mid-2025 isn’t “early” anymore—it’s the end of early. Institutional buying, mainstream attention, and global recognition mean the window for positioning in foundational infrastructure is narrowing. But the upside remains enormous: traditional finance represents roughly a quarter of global GDP, running on 1950s technology. The addressable market for better settlement infrastructure is massive even without considering moonshot scenarios like Bitcoin replacing the dollar.
Thomas reflects on the psychological difficulty of holding through 2022-2023. Solana at $10 felt devastating. The slow grind from $20 to $30-40 took nearly eight months. Charts don’t capture the sentiment—other ecosystems mocking Solana as the “poor chain,” the constant pressure to capitulate. Yet those who kept DCA-ing through the darkness are now positioned perfectly for the next phase.
They discuss dollar debasement briefly, with Gaius mentioning reading about Weimar Republic hyperinflation where people needed wheelbarrows of cash to buy bread. The early signs were just rising house prices—a parallel to today. But he doesn’t get deep into monetary theory, preferring to focus on the practical reality: crypto infrastructure works better than legacy systems, adoption is accelerating, and owning foundational assets through this transition creates wealth.
Final Thoughts and Life Balance
Gaius reveals he has three kids, joking that his six-year-old daughter tells neighbors his job is “taking his phone and saying good morning to people for money.” She’s not wrong—though he clarifies it’s “GM,” not “good morning.” The logistics of three children are “horrendous,” he admits, but they keep him grounded.
His routine balances The Vault’s operations, angel investing through The Library, supporting founders, and family life. It’s a full 168 hours per week. Despite the intensity, he maintains his core message: be kind, support builders, stake your SOL, ignore influencers, and take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to build generational wealth by simply holding infrastructure while the world adopts it.
Thomas wraps by praising Gaius as one of the few reasonable voices on crypto Twitter—someone focused on fundamentals rather than hype cycles. The conversation reinforces that while trading content dominates social media because it generates engagement, the real wealth gets built by people who tune out the noise and stay focused on the long-term thesis playing out in real-time.
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