Special: Solana (with CEO Anatoly Yakovenko)
Acquired19 Jul 2021

Special: Solana (with CEO Anatoly Yakovenko)

We sit down with the hottest new protocol layer in crypto today: Solana, and its cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko, who is the CEO of Solana Labs. If you listened to our Ethereum episode or follow crypto even at a cursory level, you've likely heard of Solana and its ability to scale transactions thousands of times higher than Ethereum. And, unlike other so-called "ETH killers", Solana is doing so in production today with large and real applications. We dive into the project's history coming out of the 2017-18 crypto winter, how it works and what's ahead now that they've recently raised $314m (yes that is Pi $million) from a16z and Polychain Capital, with their native SOL tokens currently trading at a market cap around $10B (!).

Sponsors:


More Acquired!

© Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC


Topics covered:

  • Anatoly's background as a wireless engineer at Qualcomm, and how it led to a fundamental discovery of how to improve crypto system scalability
  • Solana's role in the crypto protocol ecosystem and why there's a need for it (and why it can and will exist) alongside Ethereum versus "killing" it
  • Starting Solana during the 2017-18 crypto winter, and how it forced them to focus just on building and shipping versus raising and posturing
  • Bootstrapping adoption with the mining community (Solana's "true believers") and the early and ardent support they provided
  • Where Solana falls on the Vitalik "Scalability - Security - Decentralization" trilemma, and why Solana's superpower of maintaining composability is so attractive

Links:

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Episoder(213)

Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi)

Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi)

We sit down once again with one of the world’s very best strategy thinkers, 7 Powers author Hamilton Helmer — this time joined by his impressive Strategy Capital colleague Chenyi Shi — to discuss plat...

6 Apr 20221h 24min

Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

Nvidia Part I: The GPU Company (1993-2006)

He wears signature leather jackets. He can bench press more than you. He makes cars that drive themselves. He’s cheated death — both corporate and personal — too many times to count, and he runs the 8...

28 Mar 20222h 1min

Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner)

We hear a lot these days about hedge funds becoming venture firms, and venture firms becoming hedge funds. But a decade before either of those approaches became mainstream, a tiny $3m fund in Boston n...

15 Mar 20221h 54min

SONY

SONY

Born in the unlikeliest of places — the terrible, wasteland-like aftermath of post WWII Japan — Sony rose to capture the imaginations (and wallets) of consumers and engineers around the world. The com...

7 Mar 20223h 3min

Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Super Pumped (with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

We sit down with two of the most talented and respected people in Hollywood — Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt — to talk about the process of adapting Mike Issac’s story of Uber, “Super Pumped...

22 Feb 20221h 4min

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave)

We sit down with perhaps the only person besides Marc Andreessen who’s had a major influence on each of the Web 1, 2 and 3 eras: Brave Browser CEO (and former Netscape + Mozilla Chief Architect) Brend...

15 Feb 20221h 43min

Peloton

Peloton

The Peloton journey has been one seriously wild ride. From can’t raise money to one of Tiger Global’s first venture investments, to pandemic darling to the stock being down 85% in 6 months... there’s ...

10 Feb 20222h 20min

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version)

Not only is Taylor Swift the biggest music artist of our generation by nearly every metric (it’s not even close!), with the re-recording of her original albums she’s in the process of reshaping the en...

23 Jan 20222h 39min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
dine-penger-pengeradet
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
e24-podden
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
pengesnakk
finansredaksjonen
utbytte
pengepodden-2
rss-sunn-okonomi
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
lederpodden
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
liberal-halvtime
rss-markedspuls-2
lederskap-nhhs-podkast-om-ledelse
arcticpodden