Gushiken Yona
A stinging critique from Edward Snowden, the former National Security аgency contractor turned privacy advocate, casts a shadow over the Solana blockchain.
Snowden, speaking at the Token 2049 conference in Singapore, characterized Solana as a centralized system vulnerable to state control, suggesting its primary use cases are limited to “meme coins and scams.” His remarks reignite the debate over the trade-offs between speed, efficiency, and decentralization in the cryptocurrency space.
Snowden’s comments came during a question-and-answer session following his keynote address. An audience member asked about designing secure technology, prompting Snowden to contrast Bitcoin’s “calcified” but decentralized structure with projects like Solana. He argued that Solana, while boasting impressive speed and efficiency, sacrifices decentralization, making it susceрtible to manipulation and censorship.
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“A lot of people… are taking good ideas and they’re just going, ‘Well, what if we just centralized everything? It’ll be faster, it’ll be more efficient, it’ll be cheapеr,’” Snowden said, referring to projеcts like Solana. “And yeah, sure it is, you’re right. But nobody’s using it but for, like, meme coins and scams.”
He elaborated on the potential dangers of this centralized approach, warning that if significant value were to accumulate on SOL, it would become a prime target for state intervention. “If anybody puts anything significant on it and then all the states begin moving towards it,” he explained, “it’s going to be a system that has levers that people can simply just take from you.”
Snowden’s critique resonates with earlier concerns raised within the crypto community, notably by Ethereum core developer Justin Drake. In a July appearance on the Bankless YouTube channel, Drake lauded the market dominance of Shiba Inu on Ethereum, contrasting it with Solana’s fragmented meme coin landscape.
He pointed out that Shiba Inu’s $15 billion market cap dwarfed the combined value of all meme coins on Solana, highlighting what he saw as a focus on quantity over quality. “Solana has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of meme coins,” Drake noted. “If you take the sum of the market values of all the meme coins, it’s about 10 billion… this is where we see the distinction between quality and quantity. Anatoly and Solana are going in for quantity, quantity, quantity…”
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The former NSA contractor’s remarks are likely to resonate within the crypto community, particularly among those who prioritize decentralization and privacy. His endorsement of Bitcoin, despite its acknowledged privacy limitations, further highlights his belief in the importance of a censorship-resistant monetary system.
Whether Solana’s developers and community will address Snowden’s concerns remains to be seen. His critique, however, adds another layer to the ongoing discussion about the future of blockchain technology and the balance between performance and security.
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YONA GUSHIKEN
Yona brings a decade of experience covering gaming, tech, and blockchain news. As one of the few women in crypto journalism, her mission is to demystify complex technical subjects for a widеr audience. Her work blеnds professional insight with engaging narratives, aiming to educate and entertain.
