At one of the most anticipated fireside sessions of Solana APEX, three industry heavyweights — Solana Foundation President Lily Liu, Bybit Co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou, and Byreal Founder Emily Bao — came together to deliver more than just a product launch. They delivered a vision: one where real assets finally flow seamlessly across centralized and decentralized financial systems.
The crowd packed into the room, and the mood was electric. The conversation wasn’t just about Byreal — it was about what the future of DeFi should look like.
“Onchain capital markets for traditional assets are closer than we think,” said Lily Liu, opening with a sweeping vision of Solana’s next chapter.
She laid out Solana’s ambition to become the premier ecosystem for capital — supporting everything from memecoins to money market funds, and with an eye firmly on real-world assets (RWAs). Liu emphasized the trillion-dollar opportunity: a future where tokenized equities like those planned in the upcoming xStocks project could give global investors exposure to public markets (outside the U.S.), all built natively onchain.
Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, reinforced this convergence, sharing how Bybit is aggressively bridging TradFi and Web3.
“It is no longer CEX versus DEX. Now it’s CEX plus DEX,” Zhou declared.
He pointed to Bybit’s new MiCAR license in Europe, enabling direct crypto access via bank accounts, and the expansion of TradFi instruments like indices, forex, and stock CFDs on Bybit’s platform. But most crucially, he spotlighted Byreal — a project incubated by Bybit to meet the growing need for deep, programmable, onchain liquidity.
At the heart of the fireside was Byreal’s founder, Emily Bao, who took the mic with equal parts clarity and conviction.
“A great exchange doesn’t just facilitate transactions — it reveals value.”
She dissected the current state of DeFi, calling out the distortion created by overhyped projects and mismatched valuations from the last bull run.
She positioned Byreal as a permissioned DEX on Solana, curating highly-demanded assets and providing real trading infrastructure for real users.
“We’re not here to compete for market share. We’re here to bridge fragmented liquidity and help high-potential projects grow. We want traders to discover the next great asset early — and with conviction.”
Byreal, she explained, is designed to sit at the intersection of CeFi depth and DeFi access. Its smart routing engine will unify fragmented order books and bring institutional-grade execution to the onchain world.
Byreal’s public beta drops June 30. Launching first on Solana.
Byreal is the ultimate liquidity layer built for real assets, delivering unmatched liquidity for users. It integrates DEX, Launch, and Vault into a unified smart routing architecture, forming a full-cycle growth engine that supports asset discovery, trading, and yield generation across multiple ecosystems. Launching first on Solana.
