‘I’m embarrassed’ – Solana CEO is ruining the silence in the controversial ad backlash
Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko has broken his silence in “America is back – time to speed up” advertisement, mixing American patriotism and modern technology with political messaging around gender identity.
“The ad is bad, and still crawl into my soul,” Yakovenko Says In a post of March 19 x after receiving immense backlash in the controversial ad.
“I’m embarrassed that I dropped it instead of just calling it what it was – meaning and punching a marginalized group.”
Yakovenko praised those in Solana’s ecosystem that called the “mess” posted on Solana’s X account, accumulated around 1.2 million views and 1,300 comments before it was removed nearly nine hours later.
Yakovenko said he will use the study experience to ensure that Solana will remain focused on open-source software development and decentralization while “outside of cultural wars remains.”
Source: Anatoly Yakovenko
Solana did not make an official comment on this matter, even though its X account has reshaped of Yakovenko’s post with its 3.3 million followers.
Cointelegraph also reached the Solana Foundation Shortly after the ad was obtained but did not receive a response.
The Two-and-half minutes The ad for the Solana Accelerate conference showed a man acting as America in a therapy session that said he had the thoughts “about change” such as crypto.
The therapist responded that he should do “something more productive, such as having a new gender” and eventually said that the person should “focus on pronouns.”
The man returned, saying that he wanted to “invent technologies, not genders.”
It took them 9 hours to delete it.
Also all the major players in Solana’s ecosystem suddenly removed their tweets that promote/support ad and RT’D and liked it takes about being bad.
They approved it, supported it and celebrated it.
They moved it because it hurt … pic.twitter.com/kpmerdptcn
– Adam Cochran (AdamScochran.eth) (@adamScochran) March 18, 2025
The ad now deleted came nine days after Solana’s X account POSTED: “Solana is for everyone.”
Related: Solana Rallies 8% while crypto markets are cured – is there room for more sol reversed?
Ventures Partner Ventures Adam Cochran Taught out that Transgender people Contribute to open-source software and cryptography to an “insanely disproportionate value.”
A GitHub survey from 2017 Found that to 5,500 randomly selected Open-Source developer, 1% is transgender, and another 1% is not binary.
Most of the data obtained during 2017 and 2018 suggest that transgender and non-binary people combined are represented in an area between 0.1% and 0.6% of the population.
Magazine: Memecoins are ded – but solana ‘100x better’ in spite of income plunge
