Solana’s Next Chapter: Acceleration, Mobile, and the Power of Building Fast

In the wake of an industry-wide crash and the collapse of FTX, many expected Solana to vanish quietly into the crypto graveyard. Instead, Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder, leaned in. On When Shift Happens, he opens up to host Kevin Follonier about the early days of Solana, the chaos of 2022, and why he believes the network is still poised to lead crypto’s next chapter.

The Early Days: “A Shot in the Dark”

Solana wasn’t born out of a grand vision. It began with an engineer’s itch. Yakovenko was fixated on solving performance limitations. Ethereum was too slow. Bitcoin was too rigid. He believed a high-throughput chain could exist without sacrificing decentralization.

Early conversations with VCs were mostly met with skepticism. The idea of a high-speed, non-Ethereum chain without a flashy ICO seemed implausible. But Yakovenko kept building. Solana quietly shipped, often with more engineers than marketers.

He designed the chain with a hardware mentality: assuming failure would happen and building for resilience. One of his earliest insights was the concept of Proof of History, a verifiable delay function that acts as a cryptographic clock. The clock, he explains, allows network participants to coordinate without talking to each other and that was a breakthrough in blockchain efficiency.

Yakovenko was so hands-on that he believed he could have built the entire network himself. But with limited time and a short fundraising window, he knew he needed a team. His co-founders weren’t picked from a hiring pool. They were trusted friends and referrals he knew could handle pressure. “That kind of pressure,” he said, “you can’t put on an employee.”

FTX Fallout: From Collapse to Conviction

When FTX collapsed, the blowback was immediate. Solana was deeply entangled with the exchange, and Yakovenko woke up to hate mail and fear of complete ecosystem collapse. Founders were at risk of losing their runway. He feared the worst.

But the fallout had a silver lining. The noise was gone. What remained were the true believers. Yakovenko describes the moment as a kind of relief, a bear market cleanse that brought clarity. Builders doubled down. New teams emerged. And the community leaned in harder than ever.

Not Competing With Ethereum — Complementing It

Despite frequent comparisons, Yakovenko doesn’t position Ethereum as a rival. He praises the Ethereum developer community and credits the protocol’s capacity to evolve as a core strength. He’s had years of respectful dialogue with Ethereum devs, even during public disagreements.

Where Ethereum prioritizes modularity and decentralization, Solana focuses on vertical integration and performance. “Everything is programmable” is a phrase that captures his approach, absorbing complexity into the protocol rather than scattering it across layers. To Yakovenko, both ecosystems are valuable and serve different needs.

The UX That Web2 Forgot

For Yakovenko, crypto’s biggest bottleneck isn’t regulation or liquidity — it’s user experience. Wallets, bridges, and apps still feel clunky and unintuitive to the average user. He wants crypto to feel invisible. “The best apps,” he says, “are the ones where you don’t even notice the blockchain.”

That vision is what drives Solana’s roadmap: compressed NFTs, account abstraction, native fee markets, all designed to lower the cognitive load.

Nowhere is this vision clearer than in Solana Mobile. Despite early skepticism, the team believes mass adoption will come when crypto tools are embedded directly into smartphones. The Saga and Seeker phones include features like Seed Vault, which protects private keys without requiring users to re-enter them across apps. The idea is to create a secure, crypto-native environment that feels like Apple Pay.

One proof point? The launch of MadLads, a buzzy NFT collection that required a Saga phone to mint. It wasn’t just hype. It drove real demand and offered a glimpse into how hardware and culture could converge to onboard new users.

While Anatoly admits mobile still feels like a “toy problem,” he believes it’s a long-term bet worth making. The ultimate goal? Disrupt the current mobile duopoly and offer developers a crypto-friendly alternative to the 30% fees charged by app stores.

Scaling Without Breaking

Solana processes more transactions than most other chains and L2s combined. But Yakovenko isn’t chasing speed for speed’s sake. His focus is resilience, validator diversity, multi-client infrastructure, and recovery times.

This mindset traces back to his hardware engineering roots. Hardware engineers expect systems to fail, so they build with failure in mind. That mentality shapes Solana’s architecture: scale, break, recover, repeat.

He compares the blockchain to a “global atomic clock,” i.e., a network in sync that doesn’t fall apart at scale. That vision isn’t just technical; it’s philosophical. Reliability and responsiveness aren’t just features but core values.

Solana’s Culture of Builders

Yakovenko sees Solana’s culture as scrappy, experimental, and refreshingly unserious. He jokes about Fartcoin tweets and celebrates the launch of Bonk, the first big meme coin on Solana, which was airdropped to buyers of the Solana Mobile phone. He compares the meme coin craze to Apple’s early mobile app revenue: silly games that ended up funding an empire.

He’s proud of how fast things move. Solana’s NFT support was built in just 48 hours. Projects like Helium and Hivemapper — DePIN networks — now thrive on Solana, representing the bleeding edge of crypto-powered infrastructure.

The Freedom to Fail

Yakovenko attributes much of his journey to the culture of Silicon Valley. When he quit Dropbox, the team told him he could return if things didn’t work out. That kind of safety net, he says, creates room for boldness. “There’s a freedom to fail here that’s very unique.”

And crypto, he argues, is expanding that same freedom globally. The ability to fundraise and build from anywhere is turning crypto into a second Silicon Valley that lives on the internet.

Final Thought: Progress Over Perfection

Yakovenko doesn’t have commit privileges anymore. He doesn’t push code. But he still believes he could jump in and fix things if he had to. He says the best founders know their product top to bottom — they don’t just manage, they dominate.

He defines success not by accolades or exits, but by improvement. “I’m happy being the second-worst surfer if I can get better every day.”

In a world chasing the next big thing, Solana is playing the long game — building fast, failing smart, and getting better with every block.

👉If you enjoyed reading the summary, head over to When Shift Happens on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform to access the full convo.