Ukrainian Anatoliy Yakovenko founded the blockchain startup Solana in 2017. His technology works faster than Ethereum, one of the most popular blockchain platforms in the world. In five years, the startup has sold hundreds of millions of tokens, on which investors have earned about $1 billion, multiplying the initial investment by thousands of times, The Information reports. Why they believed in the Ukrainian's idea
How it all began
Yakovenko met his first investor, David Quick, a partner at marketing firm Enginefish, in 2018 at an underwater hockey club in California. “I remember him coming out of the pool and saying, ‘Hey, I’m building my own blockchain,’” Quick told The Information in December.
Solana's Largest Investors
David Quick
Partner at the marketing company Enginefish. He was one of the first investors in Solana and still holds its tokens, the value of which has increased 4,300 times.
Edith Jung
Partner of the venture fund 500 Startups. Invested $250,000 in tokens, which is equivalent to $1.1 billion today. This is 4,400 times the initial price.
Vinnie Lingham
Partner at Multicoin Capital. Bought $20 million in tokens in Series A round. Since then, the amount has grown to approximately $780 million.
Chris McCann
Partner at Race Capital. Initially invested $250,000, but the amount grew to $1 billion, which is 4400 times more than the initial investment.
Seven Lessins
Partner at Slow Ventures. Doesn't disclose how much he invested, but says the return on investment has grown 5,700 times.
At the time, Yakovenko was having a hard time finding investment in the blockchain startup. After a record-breaking 2017 for Bitcoin, its price fell by 80% the following year, sowing mistrust in the industry among investors. However, Kwik liked Yakovenko’s idea and, together with other investors, took part in the company’s initial public offering (ICO) in 2018. At that time, Solana sold almost 80 million tokens – one costing 4 cents.
Why do investors buy tokens?
SOL tokens provide access to the Solana blockchain developed by Yakovenko, which allows for the creation of decentralized programs – so-called daaps. Solana works faster than its well-known competitor Ethereum. It processes about 3,187 transactions per second, and more than 65,000 during peak periods. Ethereum processes only 15 transactions per second, Bitcoin – five to seven.
Solana creates one block of information in the network in 0.4 seconds, Ethereum - in 10 seconds, and Bitcoin - in 10 minutes. The commission paid by miners depends on the speed of work. Solana has a much lower price - less than one cent per transaction, Ethereum - $ 25-53, depending on the price of electricity. On the Solan blockchain, developers have built the streaming service Audius, the simulation game DeFi Land, the cryptocurrency exchange Saber and about 900 other programs. Ethereum has almost 3,000 such programs, according to the State of the Daaps tracker.
Yakovenko has said in interviews that he doesn’t want to destroy Ethereum — that’s bad for the industry. His plan is to influence the global financial market. “Big companies like Bank of America or Visa can’t change and move as fast as a global community of developers who come together and write code whenever they want,” he tells TechCrunch.
Why do investors buy tokens?
SOL tokens provide access to the Solana blockchain developed by Yakovenko, which allows for the creation of decentralized programs – so-called daaps. Solana works faster than its well-known competitor Ethereum. It processes about 3,187 transactions per second, and more than 65,000 during peak periods. Ethereum processes only 15 transactions per second, Bitcoin – five to seven.
Solana creates one block of information in the network in 0.4 seconds, Ethereum - in 10 seconds, and Bitcoin - in 10 minutes. The commission paid by miners depends on the speed of work. Solana has a much lower price - less than one cent per transaction, Ethereum - $ 25-53, depending on the price of electricity. On the Solan blockchain, developers have built the streaming service Audius, the simulation game DeFi Land, the cryptocurrency exchange Saber and about 900 other programs. Ethereum has almost 3,000 such programs, according to the State of the Daaps tracker.
Yakovenko has said in interviews that he doesn’t want to destroy Ethereum — that’s bad for the industry. His plan is to influence the global financial market. “Big companies like Bank of America or Visa can’t change and move as fast as a global community of developers who come together and write code whenever they want,” he tells TechCrunch.
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