‘We were worried about ecosystem startups’ — Solana co-founder on FTX collapse
Tech ‘We were worried about ecosystem startups’ — Solana co-founder on FTX collapse Tin tức Bitcoin Ethereum The infamous collapse of FTX sent shockwaves through the broader cryptocurrency space in 2022, but the Solana ecosystem was particularly hard hit in the fallout. Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph at the latest edition of the Solana Breakpoint conference hosted in Amsterdam, Solana co-founder and Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko recalls his concern for several projects that were building on the layer-1 smart contract blockchain protocol. “I was more worried about the ecosystem of startups; we didn‘t know how exposed teams were,” Yakovenko explained. Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), saw a significant drop in value in the immediate wake of FTX‘s bankruptcy, with its token trading at $36 in early November 2022 before dropping as low as $12 in the days after the exchange’s collapse. Solanas brains trust and several investors contacted hundreds of teams building products, services and decentralized applications to take stock of the collateral damage. According to Yakovenko, about 20% of Solana-based projects had received investments from FTX or Alameda Research, and just 5% of ecosystem startups had funds sitting on the defunct exchange. “Thats what hurt the most. Those teams saw their runway evaporate.” Yakovenko empathized with founders