SOL Blockchain founder brushes off FTX woes, stays safe in tight landscape

Solana Labs founder Anatoly Yakovenko said he remains uncertain about the prospects for the Solana blockchain in an increasingly competitive landscape.

At least six blockchain networks are on track to launch in the coming months, adding to the more than 50 Layer 1 networks already active. In the past two weeks, both zkSync and Sui Network have started operations.

Upcoming projects such as Scroll, Coinbase-backed Base and ConsenSys-backed Linea are gaining traction among developers. All are flush with capital to fund development activity and marketing, potentially cutting into the market share of existing networks like Solana.

However, Yakovenko remains confident in Solana’s technical strengths.

“None of them are as fast as Solana, do as many transactions as Solana or run as many nodes as Solana. I think we’re still pretty advanced on the technology front, Yakovenko said in a Wednesday interview on CoinDesk TV. “You’ve seen people like Helium move from their own tier 1 that they’ve been working with. Render voted to move to Solana as well.”

Crypto connectivity project Helium began its migration to Solana last month, abandoning its own infrastructure in favor of what it called a more stable home. Render, originally at Polygon, moved to Solana last week, citing faster speed and security.

The fall of crypto exchange FTX, while unprecedented, has little reason to harm the Solana ecosystem, Yakovenko said, although FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was a vocal advocate for Solana, voicing support for more network applications via the token listings, investments and campaigns.

“FTX had such a big place in the market. And they built on Solana, they built a lot of applications. And when they collapsed, it created this huge hole,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure. Is this ecosystem going to survive?”

However, developers took a long-term perspective, he said.

“The rest of the developers building on Solana really had nothing to do with FTX. And you saw that in the last hackathon. We had over 800 projects submitted during that hackathon. It was our biggest hackathon ever. So and it happened, basically, two months after the FTX collapse,” said Yakovenko,

His words are not empty air, data from the chain suggests. Wallet activity on Solana was the second highest among all blockchains in April, according to research firm Nansen tweeted Wednesdaybeat Polygon and Ethereum and behind only BNB Chain.