Stephen Akridge, a co-founder of Solana, is in the middle of a courtroom showdown. His ex-wife, Elisa Rossi, has dragged him into a lawsuit claiming he made off with “millions of dollars” from her staking rewards.
These are earnings generated by locking up Solana tokens to validate transactions—a common way crypto holders make passive income. Rossi says Akridge used his deep technical knowledge of the blockchain to siphon the profits from her Solana holdings.
According to the lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, the tokens were in her wallet, but the rewards somehow ended up in his hands. She accuses him of operating her staking accounts without permission and pocketing every dime.
The legal battle is basically a crypto soap opera. Rossi and Akridge were married for ten years before filing for divorce in February 2023.
The high stakes of staking rewards
By pledging tokens to a blockchain network like Solana, users help validate transactions and secure the network, earning new tokens in return.
Rossi’s complaint alleges that Akridge, with his background as a top blockchain engineer, used this mechanism against her. The exact amount of money in dispute isn’t clear, as portions of the lawsuit have been redacted. But Rossi has called the sums as “significant.”
Considering Solana’s recent price recovery, they could easily be worth millions. Neither Akridge nor the Solana team has publicly commented on the case. He is now the CEO of Cyber Grant Inc.
Solana’s controversial rise
This lawsuit comes at a time when Solana itself is clawing its way back to prominence. The blockchain network has had a turbulent history. Launched in 2017, it wowed the crypto industry with its Proof-of-History consensus mechanism, allowing it to process up to 65,000 transactions per second.
That speed put Solana on the map as a competitor to Ethereum in decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). But Solana’s historic rise wasn’t without controversy. You see, the blockchain became closely linked to Sam Bankman-Fried and his trading firm, Alameda Research.
So when FTX collapsed in late 2022, Solana’s price tanked, plunging below $10. Critics questioned its future. But fast forward to press time, and Solana has defied the odds. Its price skyrocketed to $265 in November before stabilizing around $241 in December.
The blockchain now boasts a market cap of over $100 billion and a total value locked (TVL) of $9.35 billion in DeFi projects. It’s one of the most traded cryptos in the world, with daily volumes exceeding $6 billion.
Though the network hasn’t been immune to technical hiccups, frequent outages have raised concerns about its reliability, even as its popularity among developers and investors grows.
As for Akridge, this lawsuit could tarnish his legacy as one of Solana’s key builders. According to Rossi’s complaint, he was a principal engineer at Solana and worked alongside co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal to bring the blockchain to life.
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