Jason Li is the co-founder of Solayer Labs, a restaking protocol built natively on the Solana blockchain. As Head of Engineering at Solayer, he leads the development of innovative blockchain infrastructure designed to enhance Solana's scalability and security while optimizing asset returns for users. ^{[4] [1] [2]}

Overview

Jason Li has established himself as a notable figure in the blockchain industry through his work on Solayer, which enables decentralized applications to achieve improved network bandwidth on the Solana blockchain. The protocol allows users to re-stake their SOL tokens or Solana-based liquid staking tokens (LSTs), converting them into re-staked assets called sSOL. These tokens can then support various dApps and active verification services on Solana. Li's technical expertise has been instrumental in developing Solayer's innovative architecture, known as InfiniSVM, which pushes blockchain performance to hardware limits by leveraging Infiniband RDMA for near-microsecond inter-node communication. ^{[1] [2] [4]}

Education

Jason Li holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a 3.93/4.0 GPA. At Berkeley, he participated in Blockchain at Berkeley and served as a Teaching Assistant for computer security and operating systems courses. He also studied Business at the Haas School of Business and previously attended Victoria Junior College in Singapore, where he led the Robotics Club.

Career

Li began his career in the blockchain space as Head Manager for the Greater China Region at BlockShow for Cointelegraph from 2017 to 2018. During this same period, he also served as a Fintech Executive Trainer and Consultant at Intuition, where he likely gained valuable experience in financial technology that would inform his later blockchain ventures.

In 2018, Li co-founded and led engineering at InkyLabs Inc, marking his first entrepreneurial venture. Following this, from 2019 to 2022, he co-founded LoopChat and served as its Engineering Lead, further developing his expertise in blockchain technology and decentralized applications.

In 2022, Li co-founded MPCVault, where he continues to serve on the board. This venture likely contributed to his growing expertise in blockchain security and infrastructure, as MPC (Multi-Party Computation) technology is often used for secure key management in cryptocurrency applications.

Li's most recent contribution to the blockchain space came with the co-founding of Solayer Labs, where he currently serves as Head of Engineering. At Solayer, Li has been instrumental in developing a restaking protocol that enhances the Solana blockchain's security and scalability. The protocol's innovative architecture, which Li helped design, enables transactions of 1M+ per second and network bandwidth exceeding 100Gbps.

Under Li's technical leadership, Solayer launched in Q1 2024 and has quickly become a significant component of the Solana ecosystem. The protocol addresses liquidity challenges in LST adoption and provides a user-friendly staking experience through its single sSOL/SOL pool design, which minimizes price impact and transaction fees.

Between his entrepreneurial ventures, Li worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Youpi Inc. from 2023 to 2024, further honing his technical skills in software development.

Solayer, under Li's technical guidance, has secured significant backing from prominent investors, including Polychain Capital, Binance Labs, and Anatoly Yakovenko (co-founder of Solana). This support enabled Solayer to secure $12 million in seed funding as of August 2023.

Li has been featured as a speaker at blockchain industry events, sharing his expertise on restaking, scaling Solana, tokenizing real-world assets, and hardware scaling. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]}

Interviews

Web3 Infrastructure and Scalability #01

In the January 7, 2025 episode of CryptoNews Spotlight, Jason Li, co‑founder of Solayer Labs, outlined his assessment of Solana’s network and its implications for emerging Web3 applications. Li noted that Solana’s capacity, reported at up to one million transactions per second, serves as the technical basis for protocols that aim to balance throughput and responsiveness without altering core user workflows.

Li described “reaking” (re‑staking) as a mechanism by which staked assets can engage in multiple on‑chain processes concurrently, expanding both liquidity pools and functional utility beyond the constraints of traditional staking models. He suggested that this model may reduce entry barriers inherited from conventional finance systems and support broader participation in decentralized networks.

Discussing the collaboration with Binance Labs, Li indicated that the partnership facilitates faster integration of developer tools and interface enhancements. He introduced the term “mega consumers” to refer to users entering the crypto sector via streamlined experiences rather than complex command‑line operations, and he positioned this trend as a key driver for the next adoption phase.

On real‑world asset tokenization, Li referred to plans for representing U.S. Treasury bills on‑chain, with the objective of creating hybrid instruments for institutional participants. He identified hardware configurations, particularly GPU‑optimized setups and advanced network architectures as prerequisites for achieving lower latency and greater throughput.

Looking forward, Li projected that the maturation of Web3 will involve the abstraction of underlying protocols, enabling applications to deliver stability and consistency comparable to current Web2 services without exposing end users to technical complexities. ^[11]

Li’s Perspective on Blockchain Scalability #02

On March 21, 2025, the Roxom TV channel aired an interview with Jason Li, co‑founder of Solayer, in which he described key challenges in increasing the throughput of blockchain networks. Li explained that the team developed Infinite SVM, a combined hardware‑and‑software system intended to process up to one million transactions per second while optimizing energy use.

According to Li, the Infinite SVM rollout led Solayer to rank among the ten largest protocols on the Solana network within six months of its introduction, with approximately USD 600 million in total value locked. He attributed this position to the integration of dedicated servers and targeted software improvements, which he said were designed both to raise transaction throughput and to strengthen security measures.

Looking ahead, Li identified broader use of stablecoins and partnerships with major exchanges, such as Binance, as factors that could support larger‑scale deployment of decentralized applications. He noted that aligning blockchain transaction processing with the speed and simplicity of conventional financial systems would be essential for widespread adoption of Web3 technology. ^[12]