Analyst Bearish On Solana, Claims Co-Founder And Lead Developer Are “Trolls”

Crypto and Ethereum advocate Adriano Feria is bearish on Solana, not because of the coin’s price action in the medium to long term but because of the blockchain’s top leadership. 

In an X post on January 5, Feria asserted that Solana’s leading figures, including Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder, and Mert, one of the project’s top developers, are either “trolls” or “idiots.” What’s worse, the observer notes, is that Solana’s followers continue to support them “blindly.”

Feria: Solana Leaders Issue Contradicting Statements

In the post, Feria highlighted several instances where Solana’s leadership has made “contradictory” or “inaccurate” claims. For example, the analyst pointed out that Yakovenko has, in the past, flip-flopped on the relationship between Solana and Ethereum. 

To illustrate, Feria said the Solana co-founder initially suggested that Ethereum become a layer-2 solution for Solana. However, the executive later asserted that Solana was already a layer-2 solution for Ethereum.

In essence, Yakovenko seems to have suggested that given Ethereum’s scaling challenges, Solana, a “high throughput blockchain with low fees,” can process Ethereum transactions as an off-chain option. This setup is the same approach taken by Arbitrum, Base, or Optimism, for example, to relieve the world’s second-largest blockchain by market cap.

Feria also criticized Solana developer and influencer Mert for “lacking” fundamental knowledge of crypto principles. The analyst claimed the developer habitually resorts to personal attacks rather than engaging in constructive discussions. Earlier, Feria continued, Mert could not clearly explain Solana’s historical transaction processing capacity or the concept of “consensus overhead.” 

Based on a previous comment, Feria also questioned the developer’s suggestion that Ethereum roll-ups would be more attractive to projects and developers if deployed on parallelized EVM platforms, considering Ethereum’s inherent scalability capabilities.

What It Means For Solana

Overall, the critique of Solana’s leadership and developers echoes concerns raised by other industry observers who believe that the project’s marketing and communication strategies tend to inflate the network’s true capabilities. 

Responding to Feria’s post on X, some said they were trolled when hard but legitimate questions were raised. These criticisms can undermine Solana’s credibility and hinder its adoption among serious investors and developers.

Despite the bearish take, Solana has been trending higher, even outperforming top coins, including Ethereum and Bitcoin, in the past three months. The coin is trading at around $100, down from 2023’s high of approximately $125. At spot rates, SOL is up nearly 5X from September 2023 lows.

Feature image from Canva, chart from TradingView