Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko says the explosion of memecoins on his blockchain was due to sluggish regulation. | Credit: Kimberly White / Stringer
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Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko admitted Solana never predicted the memecoin and NFT boom, calling it a by-product of slow regulation.
Yakovenko stressed that established traditional financial players remain geographically constrained, whereas Solana can operate globally.
The Solana CEO promoted future collaboration with traditional finance, framing Solana as a protocol that institutions can adopt rather than a rival exchange.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko says the explosion of memecoins and NFTs on his blockchain was less about deliberate design and more the result of sluggish regulation.
The comments come after Yakovenko slammed the NFT and memecoin industry in June, calling the assets “digital slop,” despite the assets raking in millions of revenue.
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The Solana co-founder said the team was unable to predict what was going to happen on-chain, as memecoins reportedly accounted for 62% of the Solana network’s decentralized app revenue in June.
Speaking about Solana’s early mission on the All-In Podcast, Yakovenko said the goal was to build infrastructure capable of moving traditional finance on-chain at “NASDAQ speed.”
Instead, it was speculative assets that have flourished the most.
“It turns out that is a much harder legal and regulation problem than it is an engineering problem,” he said.
“Anybody in the world can create markets for anything, including memecoins, including NFTs,” he added. “And those things took off. I think in part because of how slow regulation was to catch up.”
The Solana CEO agreed that it was “annoying” memecoins and NFTs have come out so successfully over its “true mission.”
Old vs. New Disruptors
When asked whether established regulated organisations that have begun to explore the world of blockchain are benefiting from their compliance-first background, Yakovenko acknowledged both advantages and limitations.
“This is the big challenge,” he said.
“The advantage that we have [at Solana] is that we are very nimble and we can operate everywhere in the world.”
However, the advantage of these compared to traditional corporations is “that they’re already regulated.”
“They’re already operating with those assets that we want on-chain in the U.S. but they don’t have global availability,” he added.
“NASDAQ is still in its little sandbox.”
Yakovenko argued that a breakthrough moment will come once regulators allow public-key cryptography to be used directly for transferring and managing assets.
“That’s the interface that you can wrap around and start moving anything from inside NASDAQ to Solana and vice versa,” he explained.
“Once that interface exists I think the genie’s out of the bottle … the toothpaste is out of the tube.”
“Of course,” he said when asked whether Solana has engaged with major financial players.
“We’ve talked to folks across the spectrum from banks to regulated exchanges and regulators themselves,” he added.
Yakovenko framed Solana as infrastructure rather than an institution.
“It’s like an email standard. It’s a bunch of software. The people that run it don’t report to me. I can’t fire them. I can’t stop it if I wanted to,” he explained.
This, in his view, makes it inevitable that established exchanges will eventually integrate with Solana rather than compete with it.
“If the protocol is awesome and globally synchronous and super fast, NASDAQ would make more money by just running a Solana node and integrating with it more directly,” he said.
“To me, it’s ultimately a win-win. We’re never going to build an exchange that is onboarding U.S. institutionals and serving U.S. customers,” Yakoveno said. “We want NASDAQ to do that and to run it on Solana, and that would be great.”
Solana’s Yakavenko vs. Memecoins
Yakavenko has consistently spoken out against the memecoin industry, despite the immense revenue it brings to Solana.
During a debate with Base founder Jesse Pollak in July, Yakavenko claimed memecoins and NFTs have zero fundamental value.
I’ve said this for years. Memecoins and NFTs are digital slop and have no intrinsic value. Like a mobile game loot box. People spend $150b a year on mobile gaming.
When an X user pointed out the irony of Yakovenko’s beliefs, the Solana founder compared the tokens to loot boxes in mobile gaming.
“Memecoins and NFTs have no value. Neither do loot boxes, and that business has enough revenue to destroy the second largest army in Europe every year,” Yakovenko wrote on X last year.
Kurt Robson is a London-based reporter at CCN, specialising in the fast-moving worlds of crypto and emerging technology. He began his career covering local news in Cornwall after graduating from Falmouth University with First Class Honours in Journalism. There, he cut his teeth on everything from council meetings to missing swans.
He quickly rose through the ranks to become a frontline journalist at several of the UK’s leading national newspapers. Over the years, he has interviewed musicians and celebrities, reported from courtrooms and crime scenes, and secured multiple front-page exclusives.
Following the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurt shifted his focus to technology journalism—just ahead of the AI boom. With a natural curiosity and a trained eye for emerging trends, he has found a new rhythm in reporting on innovation.
At CCN, Kurt's work focuses on the cutting edge of crypto, blockchain, AI, and the evolving digital world. Drawing on his background in people-first reporting and his deep interest in disruptive tech, Kurt delivers stories that are insightful, entertaining, and human-centric.
