Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko has damaged his silence over the “America Is Again — Time to Speed up” commercial, which blended American patriotism and tech innovation with political messaging round gender id.
“The advert was unhealthy, and it’s nonetheless gnawing at my soul,” Yakovenko said in a March 19 X submit after receiving immense backlash over the controversial advert.
“I’m ashamed I downplayed it as an alternative of simply calling it what it’s – imply and punching down on a marginalized group.”
Yakovenko praised these within the Solana ecosystem who referred to as out the “mess” that was posted on Solana’s X account, which collected round 1.2 million views and 1,300 feedback earlier than it was deleted roughly 9 hours later.
Yakovenko mentioned he’ll use the training expertise to make sure Solana stays centered on open-source software program growth and decentralization whereas staying “out of cultural wars.”
Supply: Anatoly Yakovenko
Solana hasn’t made an official touch upon the matter, although its X account reshared Yakovenko’s submit to its 3.3 million followers.
Cointelegraph additionally reached out to the Solana Foundation shortly after the advert was taken down however didn’t obtain a response.
The two-and-a-half-minute advert for the Solana Speed up convention showcased a person appearing as America in a remedy session who mentioned he was having ideas “about innovation” reminiscent of crypto.
The therapist responded that he ought to as an alternative do “one thing extra productive, like developing with a brand new gender” and later mentioned the person ought to “give attention to pronouns.”
The person snapped again, stating that he needed “to invent applied sciences, not genders.”
Took them 9 hours to delete it.
Additionally all the foremost gamers within the Solana ecosystem immediately delete their tweets selling/supporting the advert and RT’d and favored takes about it being unhealthy.
They authorised this, supported it and celebrated it.
They rolled it again as a result of it damage… pic.twitter.com/kPMERDpTcn
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) March 18, 2025
The now-deleted advert got here 9 days after Solana’s X account posted: “Solana is for everybody.”
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Cinneamhain Ventures associate Adam Cochran pointed out that transgender people contribute to open-source software program and cryptography in an “insanely disproportionate quantity.”
A GitHub survey from 2017 found that of the 5,500 randomly chosen open-source developers, 1% had been transgender, and one other 1% had been non-binary.
Most information obtained throughout 2017 and 2018 counsel that transgender and non-binary individuals mixed represented someplace between 0.1% and 0.6% of the inhabitants.
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