ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Anatoly Yakovenko is the co-founder of Solana, the fastest scaled blockchain in the world.
We start by talking about how non-US residents were trading SpaceX on Solana pre-IPO, and which parlayed into the last 130 years of US financial markets.
We then get into how Solana is removing eight layers of middlemen that make-up the legacy financial system, whether you actually need to use blockchain to do this, the 4am inspiration to start Solana, how Solana was 10,000x faster than Bitcoin, why a16z passed on investing then paid a 1,000x higher price, how launching Solana at the bottom of the market right as COVID hit led to their success, why AI won’t take your job, growing up sharing one toilet with four families in the USSR, and playing competitive underwater hockey.
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Timestamps:
(0:00) Trading SpaceX on Solana
(3:02) Why Wall Street runs on 100 year old tech
(10:51) US dominance created demand for tokenized stocks
(13:58) Complexity reduces risk of the financial system
(15:51) Do you need to use blockchain?
(18:34) Privacy tradeoffs of public ledgers
(23:45) Making a 10,000x faster blockchain
(30:05) A new data structure based on time
(32:54) Trading was Solana’s first use case
(37:41) Advice from his wife that led to Solana
(40:05) Why a16z passed (then paid up 1,000x)
(43:50) Rejection and COVID led to Solana’s fast adoption
(48:30) Best time to launch is the bottom of a market
(52:56) Why Bitcoin and Ethereum were so slow
(57:38) Rebuilding Solana with Alpenglow
(1:01:23) 35% of all stablecoin volume runs on Solana
(1:04:26) Motors replaced 200 billion jobs, AI will replace 100 billion
(1:08:17) It’s selfish to protest data centers
(1:10:11) Growing up in the USSR: one toilet, four families
(1:12:27) Culture shock moving to the US
(1:13:23) Government spending is fake GDP
(1:15:49) Playing competitive underwater hockey
(1:18:01) Armani at Backpack
(1:19:23) How Solana survived the FTX collapse
(1:22:47) There won’t be massive AI job loss
Referenced
Solana: https://solana.com/
Jobs at Solana: https://jobs.solana.com/companies/solana-foundation-2
Slow Ventures: https://slow.co/
Foundation Capital: https://foundationcapital.com/
Multicoin: https://multicoin.capital/
Follow Anatoly
Twitter: https://x.com/toly?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatoly-yakovenko
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
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