These comments came in an interview with the Solana co-founder on the All-In Podcast. This is not the first time Yakovenko has criticized memecoins and NFTs. Back in July, he called memecoins and NFTs “digital slop” with no intrinsic value, comparing them to loot boxes from mobile games.
At that time, Yakovenko also said that 62% of the revenue of decentralized applications on Solana came specifically from memecoins. He emphasized that the original goal of the project’s team was to build infrastructure capable of moving traditional finance onto the blockchain at Nasdaq speed. However, the development of speculative assets turned out to be easier from a technological standpoint than addressing regulatory challenges.
According to him, the rapid growth of memecoins and NFTs was made possible in part by the slowness of regulators. He noted that any user can launch a market for almost anything, and that is precisely what allowed such assets to quickly take leading positions in the ecosystem.
Financial Institutions and Blockchain
Yakovenko also pointed out that traditional financial organizations have an advantage: they already operate within the legal framework and have access to assets that Solana aims to bring on-chain. At the same time, Solana benefits from flexibility and global reach.
He expressed confidence that sooner or later, the key milestone will be the permission to use public cryptographic keys for direct transfer and management of assets. According to him, this will unlock the ability to move assets from platforms like Nasdaq to Solana.
Integration With Traditional Exchanges
Yakovenko stressed that Solana positions itself not as a company but as infrastructure that operates independently of his decisions. In his view, traditional exchanges will eventually integrate with Solana rather than compete with it.
As an example, he noted that Nasdaq could increase revenues if it simply launched a Solana node and embedded it into its system.
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