Solana-CEO-addresses-backlash-from-controversial-advertisementSolana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko has broken his silence regarding a controversial advertisement that was released by the company earlier this week.
In a March 19 X post, Yakovenko addressed the advertisement in question and said that “it was bad” and “still gnawing” at his soul. “I am ashamed I downplayed it instead of just calling it what it is – mean and punching down on a marginalized group,” he added.
Controversial Solana ad gets taken down just hours after going up
The video advertisement, titled “America Is Back — Time to Accelerate,” was posted by Solana’s official X account on March 18.
The two-and-a-half-minute ad, which was meant to promote the Solana Accelerate conference, showed a man acting as an American in a therapy session. The man told the therapist that he was having thoughts “about innovation,” such as crypto and blockchain technology.
The therapist then responded and told the man that he should rather do “something more productive, like coming up with a new gender.” Thereafter, the therapist said to the man that he should “focus on pronouns.”
In response, the man snapped back and told the therapist that he wants to “invent technologies, not genders.”
Members of the Solana ecosystem, which a 2017 Github survey found includes non-binary and transgender developers, were outraged by the ad and voiced their anger with the project and its team, calling the advertisement a “mess.”
The backlash from the community prompted the Solana team to take down the post around 9 hours after the ad was posted.
Took them 9 hours to delete it.
Also all the major players in the Solana ecosystem suddenly delete their tweets promoting/supporting the ad and RT’d and liked takes about it being bad.
They approved this, supported it and celebrated it.
They rolled it back because it hurt… pic.twitter.com/kPMERDpTcn
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) March 18, 2025
However, the damage had already been done, with the video accumulating 1.2 million views and 1,300 comments.
Yakevenko says he will stay out of “cultural wars” after the learning experience
The Solana Labs CEO praised the members of the Solana community who called the company out for the video.
He then said that he would use this incident as a learning experience and focus on open-source software development and decentralized technologies. Yakevenko also said that he would stay “out of cultural wars” from now on.
The ad, which has now been deleted, comes just 9 days after Solana posted on its X account that “Solana is for everyone.”
Solana is for everyone
— Solana (@solana) March 8, 2025
Solana’s native token, SOL, saw its price pump over 6% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data. This coincided with a broader crypto market rebound during the same period following the decision from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to keep interest rates steady.
The 24-hour gain has pushed SOL’s positive weekly performance deeper into the green zone. As a result, SOL is up over 8% on the 7-day time frame.
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