Accelerate with Mert Anatoly Yakovenko: Crypto, The Future of Markets, and Building Billion Dollar Products | ACC 1.1
Jul 16, 2025
Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana and a visionary in high-performance blockchains, shares his insights on the evolution of crypto. He discusses his 'Eureka' moment that birthed the innovative Proof of History concept. Anatoly emphasizes Solana's ability to compete with centralized exchanges and underlines the importance of open markets for financial innovation. He reflects on the challenges of launching in a crowded field, hiring skilled teams, and managing stress through endurance sports, all while maintaining a competitive edge.
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Eureka Moment At A Cafe
- Anatoly had a late-night eureka at a cafe that led to Proof of History as a concept.
- He compared iterative hashing proving time passed to how mining proves energy, which sparked Solana's design.
Using Time To Avoid Network Collisions
- Treating time as an external clock removes collisions and raises network capacity dramatically.
- Anatoly estimated this could be ~1000x capacity versus Ethereum or Bitcoin in back-of-envelope math.
Why A Single State Machine For Finance
- Solana targeted finance and trading because concentrated liquidity needs single-shard atomicity.
- Building one giant state machine preserves liquidity and fits DeFi's composability needs.