- Anatoly Yakovenko has expressed displeasure over a recent viral Solana ad.
- Solana’s price is seeing a bullish rally despite the controversial ad.
Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko recently came under fire concerning a controversy surrounding the firm’s recent advertisement. After days of silence, the CEO finally gave his take on the issue.
Yakovenko Disengage from the Controversial Solana Ad
Taking to the X platform, Yakovenko expressed displeasure over the controversial Solana Ad campaign. “The ad was bad, and it’s still gnawing at my soul,” the Solana CEO noted.
He added that he initially gave no thought about the campaign, “I am ashamed I downplayed it instead of just calling it what it is – mean and punching down on a marginalized group,” Yakovenko noted.
He expressed gratitude to the ecosystem developers and artists who publicly and privately called out the campaign. Yakovenko promised to use his influence and position to ensure the Solana Foundation continues its mission of decentralization, open source, and software development.
Backtracking, Solana’s official X account posted the controversial Ad video on March 18. The video advertisement is titled “America Is Back—Time to Accelerate.”
The two-and-a-half-minute ad, meant to promote the Solana Accelerate Conference, showed a man acting as an American in a therapy session. The individual reported to the therapist that he was thinking “about innovation,” including blockchain and cryptocurrency.
In response, the therapist advised the man to do something more productive, like creating a new gender. The therapist further advised the man to concentrate on pronouns. The man replied angrily, telling the therapist that his goal is to “invent technologies, not genders.”
Members of the Solana community, including non-binary and transgender developers, expressed their fury at the commercial and the team. They even labeled the project a “mess,” highlighting their displeasure with the advertisement.
As noted in our last post, the Solana team took down the video about nine hours later due to community reaction. However, the commercial had already spread widely online, accumulating 1.2 million views and 1,300 comments. Meanwhile, the video was deleted just nine days after Solana posted on its X account that “Solana is for everyone.”
How SOL’s Price Reacted
SOL, the native cryptocurrency of the Solana network, has seen its price pump within the last 24 hours despite the controversial ad. SOL increased by 5.7% to trade at $133.53, with the market cap pegged at $68.12 billion. The trading volume also surged by 75.5% to $3.6 billion, indicating investors’ increasing interest in the asset.
Meanwhile, the surge in Solana’s price coincides with a broader market uptick. At the same time, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has decided to keep interest rates steady.
Amid the ad brouhaha, Tron founder Justin Sun announced plans to integrate TRX into the Solana ecosystem. As detailed in our last news piece, the collaboration could facilitate direct cross-chain swaps between TRX and SOL. Eventually, this would reduce transaction costs and eliminate the need for intermediaries.
Some analysts have predicted a major rally ahead of Solana upon SOL-based Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) approvals.
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