Paola Del Zotto Ferrari, Resident Director of Phoenix Spark
34 years old, originally from Artegna, in the province of Udine, Andrea Baglioni has already had a remarkable career trajectory that led him to become Head of Grants and Capital at the Solana Foundation, the non-profit organization headquartered in Geneva that supports the development of the Solana ecosystem — the leading high-performance platform and network enabling fast, secure, and cost-effective digital transactions, powering thousands of applications ranging from payments to gaming, digital art to financial services. Paola Del Zotto Ferrari, Resident Director of Phoenix Spark, had the opportunity to interview him and to guide us through his journey towards the future of Innovation.
Let’s rewind: Can you walk us through your journey from Artegna, to Wales, to Princeton for your degree in European Political Economy, and to San Francisco? Who is Andrea Baglioni, and what was the dream, the passions, the quest, that guided your academic and professional choices?
I grew up in Artegna, a small (but beautiful!) town in Friuli, and I believe that starting from a place like that gives you both humility and hunger. You feel very grounded in where you come from, but you also become curious about the wider world and how it works. Going to Wales, then Princeton, and eventually San Francisco was really an extension of that curiosity. I wanted to put myself in environments that were intellectually demanding and globally oriented.
Princeton especially gave me a chance to encounter topics and build relationships that I would have otherwise never have had the privilege to explore. I also got to learn from the world experts in a wide range of topics, including Roberto Saviano, Daniel Kahneman, and Gideon Rosen. I learned about incentives, power, markets, and how societies organize themselves. That ended up being very useful later, because even though my career went into technology, I never really thought of tech as separate from those things. Technology is one of the main ways systems get rewritten.
On a personal level, I have always been motivated by a mix of ambition and curiosity. I have never been that interested in following a conventional path just because it is safe or well understood. I have always wanted to be close to places where real change is happening. That is what eventually brought me to San Francisco. I wanted to be around builders, around people creating new things, and around industries that were still taking shape in real time.
So if there was a dream behind all of it, it was not one specific job. It was to be in the arena, close to important ideas and people, and to work on things that could actually shift how the world works.
Regarding your professional journey — which includes, among others, Square, and Algolia, all the way to the Solana Foundation — what is the common thread that connects this path?
The common thread is that I have always been drawn to foundational technology. I like being close to the layer that changes what becomes possible for everyone else.
At Square, that meant payments. It was very clear to me that payments are not just a feature. They are a core part of how economic participation happens. If you can make moving money easier, cheaper, and more accessible, you open up a lot for businesses and consumers.
Algolia was different on the surface, but to me it had a similar logic. Search is also infrastructure. It shapes how people navigate the internet, how businesses get discovered, and how digital products actually become usable. Again, it was about improving a core layer that sits underneath a lot of other experiences.
Then at Solana, the scope got even broader. What interested me there was the idea of rebuilding the financial infrastructure for the internet era. Not just making existing systems a bit better, but enabling entirely new forms of coordination, ownership, and value transfer. And beyond the technology itself, I was really energized by the ecosystem side of it. Helping builders, supporting founders, allocating capital, and trying to accelerate a whole network of innovation around a platform.
So the throughline is pretty simple. I have consistently tried to work on technologies that have little existing blueprint, but have a chance to change the world (for the better).
You work in one of the most critical technological sectors, spanning blockchain, cryptocurrencies, decentralized technologies, and digital payment solutions, to which the “AI-driven revolution” has now been added. How do you see the landscape taking shape in this space, and the penetration of these technologies both in business contexts and from a consumer perspective?
I think we are entering a more serious phase, which is a good thing. For a while, a lot of these technologies were discussed in very abstract or ideological terms. Now the market is asking a much more useful question: what is actually better because of this?
In crypto and payments, I think the real areas of traction are where the improvement is concrete. Cross-border payments are a good example. Stablecoins are another. If something is faster, cheaper, global, and programmable, businesses care. They do not need a philosophical argument first. They need a real advantage. On the consumer side, I think adoption tends to happen when the underlying technology becomes invisible. Most people do not care what chain something is on or how the backend works. They care that it is simple, reliable, and clearly better. That is true of almost every major technology shift. The winners are usually the companies that abstract complexity away, not the ones that force the user to understand the stack.
AI is now accelerating all of this. It is changing how software gets built, how people interact with software, and potentially how economic activity happens online. If AI agents become more real and more capable, then internet-native payment rails and programmable financial systems become even more important. You can start to imagine software that does not just assist you, but actually acts on your behalf, including economically. I’m also increasingly interested in space tech for a similar reason. It sits at the intersection of deep infrastructure, engineering ambition, and long time-horizon thinking. A lot of the most interesting shifts happen when foundational technologies become cheaper, more scalable, and more accessible, whether that is launch, satellite networks, sensing, communications, or entirely new industrial capabilities. To me, that has a similar feel to crypto and AI at their best. It is not just about a new product. It is about opening up an entirely new layer of possibility.
So to me, the future is less about one technology winning in isolation and more about these technologies starting to converge. AI, payments, crypto, identity, software infrastructure, and even space-based systems are all beginning to overlap. That is where things get interesting.
As a representative of the Solana Foundation, you participate as a speaker at the sector’s top events across the US, Europe, and Asia: what is the message and the vision of the future you bring to the world? Decentralized networks were born with the goal of revitalizing and sustainably maintaining the original vision of the web, providing digital equality and simplifying existing value-transfer networks — is that truly the case?
I try to bring a message that is optimistic, but also grounded. I absolutely believe in the importance of open systems, permissionless innovation, and broader access. Those ideas are what drew many of us into the space in the first place. But I also think this space has matured to the point where ideals alone are not enough. The technology has to do something real for real people.
So my view is that decentralized networks matter when they create genuine utility. If they make building easier, settlement faster, coordination more open, or access more global, then they are valuable. If they are just theoretically elegant but hard to use or disconnected from real needs, then they will stay niche. I do think the original vision of the web is still worth fighting for. The internet was supposed to be open, participatory, and broadly empowering. In some ways it became that, and in other ways it became more concentrated than many people expected. Decentralized networks are one possible corrective to that, but only if they are actually useful and sustainable.
What gives me confidence is that the conversation has become much more practical. People are spending less time talking in abstractions and more time focusing on products, revenue, developers, users, and long-term viability. That is healthy. It means the industry is growing up. So the vision I usually try to communicate is this: open systems can expand who gets to build, who gets to participate, and how value moves online, but that promise has to be earned through execution. It is not enough to say something is decentralized. It has to create better outcomes.
Can you disclose a bit what’s next in your career pathway? And what is driving you in new directions?
If I look back at my career, the common thread is that I have been drawn to technologies that change the underlying rules of a system. That was true in payments, true in crypto, and it is true in the areas I am most interested in now.
What is pulling me today is a broader set of frontier technologies, especially AI, but also physical systems, robotics, and space tech. What they have in common is that they are foundational. They are not just about making an existing workflow more efficient. They have the potential to open up entirely new capabilities and behaviors.
So the next step for me is less about locking into one narrow lane today and more about being deliberate about where I can have the most impact. I am still motivated by the same things: important technology shifts, ambitious environments, and the chance to help shape a category while it is still being defined.
On a personal note, I would love find a way to reconnect with my Friulan background as well! It always holds a special place in my heart. Mandi Friûl!
