Co-Founder States Solana’s Future Depends on Ongoing Innovation

Solana’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has stated that the network’s longevity hinges on continuous evolution, directly countering Ethereum’s recent move towards protocol stagnation.

In a statement shared yesterday, Yakovenko contended that Solana must “never cease to iterate” to remain significantly beneficial for developers and users, cautioning that a halt in progress would be detrimental, regardless of which teams implement future enhancements.

These comments were made in reaction to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s manifesto from January 12, which advocated for the network to reach a point where it “can ossify if we want to,” identifying quantum resistance, scalable architecture, and account abstraction as essential requirements before halting core protocol development.

My perspective differs quite a bit on this. Solana must consistently evolve. It shouldn’t rely on any particular group or individual to do so, but if it ever stops adapting to meet the needs of its developers and users, it will perish.
It must be immensely useful to people… https://t.co/itqr1b5az4

— toly (@toly) January 17, 2026

Protocol Evolution as an Existential Necessity

Yakovenko dismissed the idea that blockchain protocols should seek completion, instead positioning continuous adaptation as the sole route to sustained viability.

“It shouldn’t rely on any single group or individual to do so, but if it ever stops evolving to meet the demands of its developers and users, it will cease to exist,” he asserted.

The co-founder envisioned a scenario where protocol enhancements are financed directly by developers whose livelihoods rely on network transactions.

“It needs to be so significantly useful to people and utilized by numerous developers who earn from the value of transactions on Solana, that they have surplus LLM token credits to contribute improvements to this shared open-source protocol,” Yakovenko elaborated.

He highlighted that sustaining utility necessitates disciplined governance together with relentless innovation.

“To avoid dying, it must always be useful. Thus, the primary objective of protocol modifications should be to address a developer or user issue. This doesn’t imply solving every problem; in fact, declining to address most issues is essential,” he remarked.

Decentralized Development Beyond Core Teams

Yakovenko’s statements imply that forthcoming Solana upgrades will increasingly emerge from outside established development entities like Anza, Solana Labs, and Firedancer.

“You should always expect a next version of Solana, just not necessarily from Anza, Labs, or FD,” he mentioned.

The co-founder proposed that new governance frameworks could drastically alter how protocol modifications are suggested and financed.

“The current trajectory suggests we are likely to find ourselves in a scenario where a SIMD vote funds the GPUs that create the code,” Yakovenko indicated, referring to Solana’s improvement proposal process.

This decentralized development ideology comes as Solana exhibits resilience under considerable pressure.

The network endured a prolonged distributed denial-of-service attack peaking near 6 terabits per second last month (the fourth-largest DDoS attack in internet history) without noticeable performance decline or delayed block production.

Solana has survived one of the most formidable DDoS attacks ever documented without any observable effect on network performance.#Solana #Suihttps://t.co/JC9BdGbU5e

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) December 16, 2025

Network Metrics Indicate Steady Growth Amid Market Fluctuations

Solana’s technical standing contrasts with recent liquidity challenges.

Last month, on-chain data from Glassnode revealed that the network’s 30-day realized profit-to-loss ratio has remained below 1 since mid-November, typically signaling bearish conditions where traders incur losses more often than gains.

Analysts at Altcoin Vector characterized the current atmosphere as a “full liquidity reset,” a trend that has historically indicated the onset of new liquidity cycles and preceded market lows.

If the pattern resembles that of April, liquidity could start to recover in about 4 weeks, potentially paving the way for renewed momentum by now.

Source: X/@altcoinvector

Despite short-term challenges, fundamental network activity continues to expand.

Average daily active addresses reached 2.4 million, up 5.64% over 30 days, while the total value locked in decentralized finance protocols stands at $11.80 billion according to Messari, reflecting a 6.98% monthly increase.

Source: Messari

Transaction fees generated $21.65 million over the past 30 days, an increase of 19.61% from the previous period, while the network processed 2.3 billion total transactions. DeFi protocols on Solana recorded $9.086 billion in total value locked according to DefiLlama, with decentralized exchanges managing $2.956 billion in 24-hour trading volume.

The Solana Policy Institute has also ramped up initiatives to lessen regulatory barriers for developers, submitting a letter to the SEC on January 10 requesting clear exemptions for non-custodial DeFi software.

The nonprofit contended that applying broker-dealer or exchange regulations to open-source smart contracts would compel protocols to either shut down or reintroduce centralized control, undermining the investor protections regulators aim to uphold.

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