Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal scramble to move past FTX's stain on SOL, down 96% from November 2021; FTX and Alameda bought 58M+ SOL tokens
$50 billion in value wiped from the cryptocurrency in 2022 Mehron Rokhy / The Daily Hodl : Solana and Associated Tokens Down Over 96% From All-Time Highs As SOL Gets Delisted From Crypto Exchange Brenda Ngari / ZyCrypto : Here's Why Solana's Future Is Still Bright Despite SOL Price Nuking 97% Below ATH: Vitalik Buterin Brenda Mary / crypto.news : Vitalik Buterin bullish on Solana says developers can now build Ashish Kumar / CoinGape : ARK Invest Ex Crypto Head Goes ‘LONG’ On Solana; Here's Why Karolina Gaszcz / Metaverse Post : Vitalik Buterin pumps Solana with just one tweet Jake Simmons / NewsBTC : Solana Prediction For 2023: SOL Is Not Dead Yet, Analyst Says Yashu Gola / Cointelegraph : Solana joins ranks of FTT, LUNA with SOL price down 97% from peak — Is a rebound possible? Bhushan Akolkar / Coinspeaker : Ethereum-Killer Solana Down 96% in 2022, Drops Out of Top 20 Crypto List Andrew Hayward / Decrypt : Solana Slides Another 16% and Falls Out of Top 20 Mike Dalton / CryptoSlate : SOL price recovers as Vitalik tweets support for Solana community Coinmonks : Solana Price Fall — Is FTX the Cause? The Information : Solana Token Plunges 30% in Past Week PYMNTS.com : Blockchain Network Solana Looks to Sever Bankman-Fried Connection Paul L. / Finbold : Solana price bleeds amid SOL-FTX association concerns David Z. Morris / CoinDesk : Why Solana Was Decimated by Bankman-Fried's Downfall Msmash / Slashdot : Solana Founders Scramble To Move Past FTX's Stain on Their Token Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk : Solana Tokens Continue Steep Slide While Major Cryptos Stay Flat Reuters : Solana crypto token loses most of its value in 2022, FTX collapse weighs Tweets: @vitalikbuterin : Some smart people tell me there is an earnest smart developer community in Solana, and now that the awful opportunistic money people have been washed out, the chain has a bright future. Hard for me to tell from outside, but I hope the community gets its fair chance to thrive🦾🦾 Wu Blockchain / @wublockchain : Matrixport, the asset management platform founded by Jihan Wu, announced that it will delist SOL and SOL-U dual-currency investment products on December 30, and will not launch new Solana products in the future. Chris Burniske / @cburniske : 1/ Still longing $SOL while haters spinelessly pile onto the downside momentum. When @solana recovers, it's not me that will be haunted by the thought, “Instead of jeering, I could have been buying $SOL ~$10.” Raj / @rajgokal : past couple years, solana's otherwise passionate community was infected mercenaries and grifters. like a bad virus, they needed to be killed. fevers are painful, but you're glad when they break quickly. every bad actor washing out of this ecosystem makes it more decentralized. Arthur / @arthur_0x : Great thread on the merits of Solana. While I'm not long $SOL at this level yet, I agree with Chris and think Solana will survive. Whether the price can make another ATH from here is a separate question though. https://twitter.com/... @mrkvaketh : Vitalik is such a class. Showing support to another blockchain in their crisis moment just after they all shouted at him “we are ethereum killer” for the whole 2021 and big part of 2022 https://twitter.com/... Ben Hunt / @epsilontheory : With Solana now down 97%, seems like a good day to RT Chamath and Elon bud David Sacks, getting a good laugh in about dumping their SOL bags. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Sunil Beri / @sunchartist : Solana -14.5% after being down 9% yesterday Down 95% YTD https://twitter.com/... Samson Mow / @excellion : Solana doesn't even work most of the time and needs coordinated reboots on Discord. https://twitter.com/... @nansen_ai : Unfazed by price volatility, NFT volume on Solana remained high at ~1.5M $SOL last week https://twitter.com/... @moonoverlord : Every single person on my feed except the smartest person saying Solana is going to zero and clowning it Makes you think 🙃 https://twitter.com/... @autismcapital : “More like ‘Solonga’🫡” - Your Dad https://twitter.com/... Mike Alfred / @mikealfred : Solana is now down almost 97% from all time highs. The good news is that it can only fall another 3%. @poordart : Cant spell insolvent without SOL https://twitter.com/... Frank Chaparro / @fintechfrank : The flippening https://twitter.com/... Alex Gerko / @alexandergerko : the stain on their token: https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... @poordart : BREAKING: Solana maxis turning away from chain as they can no longer afford the glue they were sniffing that made the Solana maxis Maya Parody / @mayazi : Everyone's blaming Sol price action on FTX, but tbh Solana had a trifecta of benefactors that each imploded in the second half of '22 - FTX, 3AC & Multicoin. If anything it demonstrates of “ecosystem” stakeholders that are too aligned & correlated in their risk exposure @songadaymann : This seems right to me. I wasn't around in 2016, but is the FTX fiasco similar for sol as the DAO hack was for eth? Eth survived because people cared, were building on it, and believed in the underlying ideas. It does seem like sol has that same underlying support. https://twitter.com/... Mando Ct / @xmaximist : For everyone that sold #ETH in 2018 for 88 USD and for everyone who is selling $SOL sub 10 USD! Fundamentals haven't changed and Solana isn't FTX! Just sayin! 🫡 https://twitter.com/... @moonoverlord : Comparing EOS to SOL is a dead giveaway you have no idea what you're doing If sol doesn't work out, it doesn't work out but it has 100x the adoption eos did founders of SOL have been nonstop building for years founder of EOS exit scammed the project AND RAN FOR PRESIDENT 😭😂 @219_eth : Fake FTX money was the reason anything was successful on sol. Sol might survive, but its gonna have a full washout and most of the projects are gonna die first. You would have to pay me ~5 million dollars to stay on sol with a project that had any level of activity https://twitter.com/... @aeyakovenko : @ShiLLin_ViLLian Sol is also for defi. It's gonna be a rebuild year. Alan Carroll / @alancarroii : Teacher: “Okay class, today we're going to learn about Polygons” Solana maxis: https://twitter.com/... @finestonematt : Sam was always a swindler & charlatan, misrepresenting important (technical) details. Below is from 2.5 years ago, L2 vs Solana days. He turned me off to anything he touched by these interactions. I have respect for the ppl on CT who shouted longer & louder warnings about him. https://twitter.com/... John Reed Stark / @johnreedstark : Looks like SOL holders are SOL. Solana's crypto token, SOL, has plummeted 96% from its all-time high of $260 in November 2021 to about $10. SOL dropped as much as 12% yesterday on concern large holders are offloading the token. https://www.coindesk.com/... @aeyakovenko : @LDrogen @crispheaney I don't think that's an intellectually honest statement given that solana handles more transactions from users and dapps per day (not counting votes) than eth and all the eth L2s and side chains combined even when including bsc. Noah / @redacted_noah : Lot of people shitting on projects (including Solana) that took investment from Alameda. Stop. Fact is, nobody knew what FTX was doing. Everyone thought they were legit. Probably most of these projects were hoping that Alameda could help them get their token listed on FTX and mm Leigh Drogen / @ldrogen : I don't understand the fealty to SOL to the point you guys are willing to ride it to zero There's nothing remotely interesting enough about the core tech to justify that level of ride or die And now the ecosystem flywheel is shot with Alameda gone Just....why? Akshay BD / @akshaybd : The Solana ecosystem scales not by increasing headcount at the foundation or via centralized backers. It is by 100s of self organized communities — like @SuperteamDAO, @LamportDAO, @SolMeetDevs, @MetacampDAO @GrapeAthensDAO & many others. You can expect this to 10x in 2023 @stepdatainsight : Daily Active Addresses Ethereum: 398.8k Solana: 358.3k Polygon: 336.8k Facts > Emotions > Price Action https://twitter.com/... @0x_osprey : Preliminary analysis for cost to double the daily active addresses, for an entire year, as a % of total network supply: Ethereum: 0.097% (~$139M) Polygon PoS: 0.0048% (~$372k) Solana: 0.000530% ($18.9k) Will double check tomorrow w/ assumptions if anyone is interested https://twitter.com/... @ottorothmund : Owning solana is lowkey goated when living under a bridge is the vibe @whalecointalk : Do you remember the historic dump of $ETH in late 2018? $SOL is following a similar pattern right now! Do you think #Solana will ever recover & reclaim its crown, the #Ethereum killer? 👀 https://twitter.com/... @notbunjil : LILY is about to crank out some stuff that I'm pretty sure you can only do on Solana Should be fun @hsakatrades : From “Solanas Jordan” to virus inducing mercenary grifter. Have his tokens fully vested? https://twitter.com/... @goldhaxx : .@theblock__'s annual report indicates that @FTX_official's large portfolio allocation in the Solana ecosystem is only part of the picture. All 9 of the next top VC firms in 2022 invested in #Solana projects. Including FTX/Alameda AVG: 25% MEDIAN: 18% w/out FTX/Alameda 23% 17% @nitro_labs : Our conviction in the #Solana ecosystem gets stronger by the day ☀️ All SVM developers, community members, #DeFi protocols and NFT projects alike have the support of the Nitro community. 2023 will be the year of SVM 🏁💚 S◎L Big Brain / @solbigbrain : Sub $10 SOL. Feeling the pain, but smelling opportunity. Still being patient on heavy capital deployment currently. BUT If any fund is sitting on locked SOL till 2025, needs liquidity and looking to sell at a discount to spot, hit me up. We are buying. 💰💵 Nagato / @nostradumbass23 : Would have credibility if you had come out and said this when vc were pumping your ghost chain with fake tvl and what not I guess you didn't wanna incur wrath of vcs who you sold your SOuL to innit Now they dusted or going you wanna play victim card lmeow I wish best for sol https://twitter.com/... @armaniferrante : Solana is forging its soul right now in the depths of hell. The heat burns. The steel sharp. But when it rises, it will rise with a community so fierce, so strong that nothing will stop it. https://twitter.com/... @tmnxeq : wasn't raj's main job to bring in these mercenaries? what is he even doing nowadays his twitter is mainly retweets and this odd statement https://twitter.com/... DeGen Ping / @degenping : Lmao, guy literally partied with all these said mercenaries and grifters, enjoyed their gifts and hospitality and then comes out and says this. https://twitter.com/... @coindesk : In a best case scenario, Solana's remaining builders face a long road back to ecosystem health, trust and relevance following the collapse of the network's most prominent backer, Sam Bankman-Fried, CoinDesk's @DavidZMorris writes. Opinion. https://www.coindesk.com/... @aeyakovenko : Does incorrect information that is spread and refuted within 48 hours have negative impact
Context & Ripple Effects
SOL's late-December decline was already being tied to concern that large holders might sell, after the broader FTX-linked market shock had sent major coins lower. Solana also entered the episode with a history of network instability that drew DeFi-trader complaints, leaving the project to address both operational and association risks.
The founders' distancing effort follows a renewed SOL selloff tied to large-holder concerns. The significance is not only the token's drawdown: FTX and Alameda's large SOL holdings make the exchange's collapse a continuing issue for Solana's market perception and product availability.
First-order effects
- Matrixport will delist its SOL and SOL-U dual-currency products and halt new Solana products, reducing one named route for investors to gain structured exposure to SOL.
- Yakovenko and Gokal must separate Solana's identity from FTX while the market accounts for the more than 58 million SOL acquired by FTX and Alameda.
Second-order effects
- Potential sales by large FTX- and Alameda-linked holders can keep pressure on SOL and reinforce product providers' reluctance to offer new Solana-linked instruments.
- Solana's developers and ecosystem participants face a higher burden to demonstrate that activity on the network is independent of the FTX relationship, particularly after earlier reliability concerns.
Third-order effects
- If exchange-linked token holdings repeatedly become a source of forced-sale risk, token projects will be judged more heavily on holder concentration and their separation from major intermediaries.
- The episode points to trust becoming platform infrastructure in crypto: network technology alone may not sustain liquidity or product distribution when a prominent backer's failure damages credibility.
The trend: Crypto platforms are being pushed to prove that their liquidity, governance and market identity can survive the collapse of a major affiliated intermediary.