Edward Snowden, the famend whistleblower and privateness advocate, made sharp feedback about Solana through the TOKEN2049 convention in Singapore. After delivering his speech, titled “The Subsequent Risk to Speech,” Snowden engaged in a Q&A session the place he criticized Solana’s structure, expressing issues about its centralized nature and the sorts of initiatives it facilitates.
Responding to the query, “How will we design expertise from first rules so we all know it’s protected?” Snowden took the chance to attract comparisons between Bitcoin’s adversarial design and what he perceives as Solana’s extra susceptible, centralized system.
“Once you look again on the Bitcoin whitepaper, I feel what you see is an adversarial strategy to the system. And that’s what you actually have to think about,” Snowden stated. With out straight naming SOL at first, he shortly shifted to critique the community, stating, “I don’t need to identify names however Solana is taking good concepts and so they’re simply going, properly what if we simply centralized all the pieces? It’ll be quicker, it’ll be extra environment friendly, it’ll be cheaper, and yeah positive it’s, you’re proper, however no person’s utilizing it however for meme cash and scams.”
Snowden went on to clarify his deeper concern, highlighting that Solana’s centralization might make it susceptible to authorities management or different types of exterior intervention. “If anyone places something important on it after which all of the states start transferring in the direction of it, it’s going to be a system that has levers that folks can merely simply take from you,” Snowden warned, signaling a possible threat for important censorship or seizures sooner or later.
His central argument was the need for adversarial considering within the design of decentralized methods, particularly given the rising consideration crypto platforms are receiving from governments and regulators worldwide. “You must be enthusiastic about the adversarial case versus the handy, straightforward early case. Meaning enthusiastic about the way it’s going to be attacked and ensuring it could actually survive that,” he stated.
Solana Neighborhood Reacts
Snowden’s remarks didn’t go unnoticed, with key figures within the SOL ecosystem shortly responding. Mert Mumtaz, the co-founder and CEO of Helius Labs, a Solana-based venture, took to X to defend the community, difficult Snowden’s claims. “Snowden appears to suppose Solana is centralized—whereas giving zero information to again it up,” Mumtaz wrote.
He referred to as for critics to offer concrete proof of any vulnerability in Solana that might enable a single entity to manage the community or compromise consumer funds. “I problem anybody to point out me the exact assault vector that might let a single entity train a lack of funds, or extended energy over the community,” Mumtaz continued, additional emphasizing the geographic distribution of Solana’s nodes and the variety of jurisdictions they function inside.
He acknowledged that whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum are extra decentralized, this doesn’t inherently imply that Solana is susceptible to the type of centralized management Snowden alluded to. “Right here’s what chances are you’ll say as an alternative: Ethereum and Bitcoin are extra decentralized than Solana — that is appropriate. Usain Bolt is quicker than Lebron James in a 100m sprint, that doesn’t imply Lebron is sluggish. The one doable single level of failure can be: a single shopper,” Mumtaz wrote.
He highlighted latest developments in Solana’s shopper range, declaring the deployment of “frankendancer” on the mainnet, in addition to the upcoming “Firedancer” shopper, which additional decentralizes the community. He concluded his rebuttal by stating, “If the community is so centralized, it’s price tens of billions—go assault it when you can!”
At press time, SOL traded at $143.
Featured picture from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
