Yakovenko: “Solana Will Survive”

In a recent interview with the Bankless podcast, Solana creator Anatoly Yakovenko said that macroeconomic conditions may be challenging in the coming period, but that this will not stop the unprecedented wave of innovation for the cryptocurrency market. Yakovenko warned that if the Federal Reserve (Fed) continues to raise interest rates to curb inflation, it could distance investment from less established blockchain projects like Ethereum (ETH) rival Solana.

“I think this is an important and big question for probably all smart contract platforms except Ethereum: Are we going to live in a high-interest environment for the next five years where all risky investments are devalued and have no interest? Even if Solana is 100 times faster, It means Solana can’t do anything useful for the world that Ethereum doesn’t cover. This is what will happen even if we do more transactions than the sum of all Ethereum Layer 2s. In this environment, they don’t provide enough value to the world, if they don’t it means they can’t survive. Now that’s big It’s like an ‘if’ and I don’t know that. That’s a really big ‘if’ for the cryptocurrency market. What is cryptocurrency doing right now that is so important to the world that the world can’t live without it?”

Yakovenko added that he is optimistic about Solana’s future. He stated that he believes Solana’s market share in NFT projects will create enough value to sustain the project, even if there is an economic downturn around the world:

“If I put on my worst bear hat and everything is so bad, even if interest rates are 10 percent, will Web3’s NFT business model survive? I think it will. And this prediction I think if that’s true, Solana will survive.”

The Solana founder predicted that the pace of innovation in the cryptocurrency market will increase at an unprecedented rate, helping the industry navigate successfully through volatile economic times:

“Right now I feel like 2018 is a lot more bull than 2019. There is still a lot of funding going on in the cryptocurrency market. There are a lot of smart young people who don’t join big companies and develop great products. If you look at all the products and what’s going to happen in the next 12 to 18 months, the next 12 to 18 months will probably be a lot more than the sum of everything up to this point. And if people are launching a product, if they’re striving for product market fit, if they’re going to find users that cryptocurrency That means the market will survive.”