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Solana Shoots Itself in the Foot, Everyone Else Stands Clear
Napoleon Bonaparte said, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.’ In that case, any competitor to Solana best stand back and watch them make mistake after mistake...
Adam Atlantic
March 20, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
While the exact phrase is disputed, it is commonly upheld that in the 1800s, famous French conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte said, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.’
In that case, any competitor to Solana best stand back and watch them make mistake after mistake.
It was only on 28 February where I asked the question of Solana, ‘Is the party over?’.
While I certainly don’t believe the party is over, I must admit, Solana doesn’t seem to be helping themselves out of this slump.
In trying to change their perception in the market, from the memecoin capital of the blockchain world to a serious, legitimate DeFi player, they decided to publish an advert to the masses this week.
Let’s just say it went down like a sack of bricks…
Solana Decides Punching Down is a Good Idea
A couple of days ago Solana posted an ad on their X.com feed.
The ad, titled, ‘America is Back—Time to Accelerate’, was supposed to advertise its upcoming Solana Accelerate conference.
The ad portrayed a character representing the United States in a therapy session, expressing a desire to focus on technological innovation, including cryptocurrency and space exploration.
The therapist, however, redirected the conversation toward topics like gender identity and pronoun usage.
This led the character to assert a preference for developing technologies over engaging in gender-related discussions.[1]
The advertisement was met with a lot of backlash from the crypto community and beyond.
Within nine hours, they’d taken it down and deleted it.
If you want to see how bad the ad is, you can take a look here.
The irony of this is the ad was ‘punching down’ on easy targets, taking shots at communities, when just 10 days earlier Solana had decided to post this on their X.com feed.
Source: Solana via X.com
The ad was so bad, that co-founder of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko even took to his own X.com account to say this,
Source: Toly via X.com[2]
Yikes!
Can Solana be for Everyone?
So, with this kind of approach can Solana be for everyone? Or is this now just damage limitations?
Well, (admittedly before the ad went live) OKX posted a ‘Happy Birthday’ message to Solana, with a snapshot of the growing Solana Ecosystem, to show how far it’s come in just a few short years.
Source: OKX via X.com[3]
That is a small but growing ecosystem of asset management, lending and borrowing, gaming and play-to-earn, staking, start-up funding (launchpad), derivatives markets, wallets, and decentralized exchanges.
All very important aspects of DeFi.
But, then again, when you put the ad in the context of some of the memecoins that you find hitting the market, all on the Solana blockchain, you kind of wonder if they’ll ever be properly respected.
I’m talking about things like, Swasticoin, Fartcoin, Unicorn Fart Dust, Buttholecoin, Retardio, Pwease and Blob Trump, just to name a few.
With even Cathie Wood of Ark Invest saying that millions of memecoin crypto will be worthless long term,[4] does that mean the value of Solana too heads in that direction long term?
It’s too early to tell if they can reshape their own narrative from this cycle. Clearly, they’re not off to a good start.
Trust in crypto,
Adam Atlantic