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The Future of Solana: Insights from Raoul Pal and Anatoly Yakovenko
- Raoul Pal’s conversation with Anatoly Yakovenko reveals Solana’s resilience and growth post-FTX crisis, fuelled by a strong developer community and successful NFT launch.
- Yakovenko emphasised Solana’s efficiency in handling high transaction volumes without fee hikes, contrasting with Ethereum’s focus on scaling solutions.
- Yakovenko views DeFi, integral to Solana from the start, as crypto’s major innovation, challenging traditional finance with software-driven efficiency.
Solana Post SBF
RealVision CEO Raoul Pal recently spoke to the co-founder of Solana (SOL) Anatoly Yakovenko about the past, present and future of the popular blockchain. An important point discussed was that Solana is more than just its association with SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried). The former FTX CEO who defrauded customers of billions and now faces a life behind bars also caused severe repercussions for Solana. Solana was a favourite of Bankman-Fried and there had been close connections, which saw SOL tumble when the FTX debacle hit. However, since then Solana recovered and has made 300% gains in 2023.
Yakovenko said that luckily for Solana there were developers who really believed and liked the Solana eco-system so they continued to build.
They really focused on growth and building a really strong community and product and have this amazing NFT launch and everything just kind of worked out for them.
Anatoly Yakovenko Solana vs Ethereum
Yakovenko highlighted that Solana is cheap and fast, capable of handling significant transaction volumes without encountering problems. This is exemplified by the network’s smooth handling of a surge in transactions following the launch of a new NFT token standard without hiking fees.
We actually solved scale to a very, very impactful amount of capacity where we’ve never hit a limit to where transaction fees globally have spiked. Which in my mind that’s a failure point in the communication network.
Anatoly Yakovenko Yakovenko pointed out that investment and development in Solana are focused more on applications rather than scaling technologies or additional layers. This contrasts with Ethereum, where there is significant focus on developing layer-2 solutions and scaling technologies due to the higher cost and lower transaction capacity of its layer one. This makes Solana a platform that has effectively addressed scalability and cost issues, shifting its focus to application-level technologies and improvements.
DeFi – A Game Changer
Yakovenko revealed that when the team worked on Solana they had decentralised finance (DeFi) in mind right from the start – because they saw the potential for fast and cheap finance applications.
It’s the biggest innovation I think that crypto brought to the world.
Anatoly Yakovenko While Solana initially struggled with DeFi after the FTX collapse, recent developments have begun to gain traction. Some of the biggest DeFi projects working on markets for trading, lending and staking are Jito, Marinade Finance and marginfi.
Yakovenko believes that crypto’s biggest innovation is its challenge to traditional finance by replacing human middlemen with more efficient software. This shift is difficult to adopt because those in finance are reluctant to lose control and the profits they earn from transactions. However, he sees this change as inevitable, predicting that within 20 to 50 years, most financial processes will be run by software. Pal added that the major financial institutions like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock are aware of this trend and are actively preparing for it.
The financial community knows this as well. I mean, they’re not stupid, right? JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo. I mean, they all know it.
Raoul Pal 
Author
Aaron Feuerstein
Aaron Feuerstein is a freelance writer based in Melbourne. His focus is on decentralised finance and the regulatory space surrounding blockchain. He holds a Master's in Accounting. When he is not studying the latest legal case, he enjoys his time as a modest but eager hobby cook.
