Solana Co-Founder Urges Builders to Rethink Crypto for Mainstream

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Solana Co-Founder Urges Builders to Rethink Crypto for Mainstream

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Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko spoke at Consensus 2026 on Tuesday, urging crypto builders to rethink product design.
Yakovenko cited past failed crypto use cases, particularly around 2017, as examples of premature timing rather than flawed concepts.
He emphasized building on current blockchain capabilities, rather than legacy designs, to achieve product-market fit and broader adoption.

Anatoly Yakovenko, a founder of Solana, believes that crypto developers need to redesign their products to attract more mainstream users and expand beyond the current, limited audience.

At the Consensus 2026 conference on Tuesday, Yakovenko explained that now is the time to create applications for a wider audience, instead of focusing solely on existing crypto enthusiasts. He encouraged developers to “reimagine what’s possible” with Solana’s speed, scalability, and efficiency, and to build new businesses from scratch leveraging these capabilities.

Timing, not ideas, was the problem

Yakovenko noted that similar patterns have occurred before, like in 2017, when a lot of ideas for using cryptocurrency didn’t succeed. He believes the problem wasn’t that these ideas were bad, but that they came too early – the market wasn’t ready for them yet.

He likened the current environment to the early days of the internet, when many great concepts appeared before the technology was fully capable of supporting them. He believes recent advancements in speed, affordability, and efficiency – especially on platforms like Solana – now allow us to try those ideas again, but with a much higher likelihood of success.

Builders urged to start from current capabilities

Instead of simply updating older designs, Yakovenko argues that developers should rethink what’s possible with today’s powerful blockchain technology.

He stressed the importance of creating systems from scratch, designed for modern technology, and building applications that can handle many users, not just those already involved in cryptocurrency.

Balancing decentralization and practical needs

As a crypto investor, I’ve been following the debate about how much control we should give up for wider adoption. It’s a tricky balance – fully decentralized systems are amazing, but big institutions often *need* more control to stay on the right side of regulations. Yakovenko highlighted this tension, and it’s something I think a lot of us are grappling with – how do we maintain the core principles of crypto while also making it accessible and compliant for everyone?

He believes the conflict between neutrality and control is often exaggerated. He explained that institutions generally favor foundational systems where no one entity has dominant control, because this creates stability and minimizes the risk of relying on any single party. However, he added that developers and businesses can still implement specific rules and controls at the application level to address compliance requirements without changing the core system.

Clarity over control

According to Yakovenko, a major hurdle for organizations wanting to use this technology isn’t a loss of control, but a lack of clear guidelines. Companies need to know exactly how these systems work, and be confident that those rules will stay the same and be reliably upheld.

Open and accessible networks provide a fundamental foundation, and let people customize and build their own tools and systems on top of it.

Focus shifts to scalable applications

Yakovenko’s comments highlight a change in the industry: a move away from simply trying out new ideas and towards creating products people can actually use. He believes that because costs are down and processing speeds are up, it’s now practical to build applications that can handle a large number of users.

Yakovenko believes the main hurdle now is actually building things people want. The technology is getting better, but success hinges on developers creating products that attract users beyond the current cryptocurrency community.

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2026-05-05 20:22