Solana's Ultimate Vision: An Interview with Anatoly Yakovenko

In a recent episode of the Lightspeed podcast, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko joined hosts Mert and Garrett to discuss Solana's core thesis, unique design choices, and vision for the future of blockchain technology. The wide-ranging conversation covered topics including Solana's approach to scalability, decentralization, governance, and more. This article provides an in-depth look at the key insights and revelations from the interview.

Solana's Core Thesis

At its core, Solana was designed to enable permissionless, fair markets on a global scale. Yakovenko explained that unlike many other blockchain projects that focused primarily on digital money or settlement layers, Solana's goal from the beginning was to create a system where information could be transmitted and accessed equally and fairly around the world, as fast as physics allows.

"What I think is really cool about permissionless systems is that they can create fairness," Yakovenko said. "The whole purpose of Solana that I thought was really, at least it would be valuable to the world is that we can create fair markets at the core information level, meaning that bits have transmitted everywhere around the world as equally and fairly to everybody and concurrently at the same time as physics allow."

This focus on information synchronization and fairness sets Solana apart from projects that prioritize store of value or settlement guarantees. Yakovenko argued that by solving the hard problem of perfect information synchronization, other benefits like settlement naturally follow.

The Scaling Bottleneck

A key aspect of Solana's design is its focus on maximizing bandwidth and compute capabilities. Yakovenko explained that the final bottleneck for blockchain scalability is data availability (DA) bandwidth - the ability to synchronize state across the network as quickly as possible.

"The fastest they can synchronize that state is going to be limited by the slowest one third of the network," he said. "You have to basically optimize and increase that throughput."

Rather than relying on sharding or layer 2 solutions, Solana aims to scale by increasing hardware capabilities over time. As bandwidth and compute power improve, Solana can simply leverage those advancements to boost performance.

"If we are limited by bandwidth right now, in two years there's going to be twice as much," Yakovenko explained. "Maybe we'll need twice as many cores to drive it because there's twice as much data to sign and cryptographically verify. But these are all Moore's law problems that just kind of solve themselves."

Hardware Scaling Advantages

While all blockchains benefit to some degree from hardware improvements, Yakovenko argued that Solana is uniquely positioned to take full advantage of increased bandwidth and compute power. This stems from Solana's design philosophy of maximizing parallelization and efficiency across cores, disks, and network cards.

"If you didn't write your software in such a way that it's just going to get better by the next chip you have to rewrite it," Yakovenko said, drawing on his experience at Qualcomm. "It was like a waste of time to build it in a way that doesn't scale well with more hardware."

By optimizing for hardware scalability from day one, Solana can improve elastically as capabilities increase. Other chains may require more fundamental redesigns to fully leverage next-generation hardware.

Parallel Execution and State Management

A defining feature of Solana's architecture is its approach to parallel execution. Unlike Ethereum's global state model, Solana separates programs and state, allowing for highly parallelized transaction processing.

Yakovenko explained that this design was inspired by his experience working with DSPs and GPUs, where memory dependencies must be laid out in advance. While this requires more work from developers upfront, it allows for extremely efficient execution.

"The way Solana's runtime is designed is from that idea the developer does the painful work of figuring out what are all the memory dependencies that the program has and conveys that in the transaction that they constructed," he said. "And then the runtime is a very easy job it never basically has a cache miss."

This approach enables Solana to process transactions in parallel much more easily than chains with a global state model. However, Yakovenko acknowledged it does create some limitations in terms of composability compared to Ethereum's more flexible but less efficient model.

Decentralization Realities

The conversation also touched on debates around decentralization and the tradeoffs involved in different blockchain designs. Yakovenko argued that true decentralization manifests in two key ways:

1. The system is permissionless, allowing anyone to participate
2. There are enough people invested in the network continuing to run that it can survive failures

He pushed back on the notion that lower hardware requirements necessarily lead to more decentralization. Instead, Yakovenko believes the incentives to run nodes are more important than the absolute cost.

"From my perspective like the key components of decentralization is that the system is permissionless like anyone can participate in it," he said. "I don't really care about the cost there like the cost could be a barrier we could argue about whether $400 a month is too much or $50 a month is like the required amount for decentralization."

Solana's Design Moat

When asked about potential competition, Yakovenko expressed confidence in Solana's architectural advantages. While acknowledging innovations from other projects, he argued that Solana's focus on hardware scalability and parallel execution creates a significant moat.

"I honestly think that like if we could give humans the cryptographic keys, it doesn't really like the networks will just emerge from that," Yakovenko said. "Like the blockchains all the stuff like I think those are implementation details to a large degree."

He believes Solana's approach of synchronizing state with minimal overhead positions it well as cryptographic key ownership becomes more widespread. The ability to elastically scale with hardware improvements provides long-term sustainability.

The Role of L2s and Modular Blockchains

The discussion also touched on layer 2 solutions and modular blockchain designs. While acknowledging potential benefits of experimentation, Yakovenko expressed skepticism about the long-term viability of complex L2 ecosystems.

"They fragment the capacity that they fragment the user base," he said of L2s. "The UX becomes very very complicated."

He argued that a single, highly optimized L1 like Solana can ultimately provide better performance and composability than a fragmented L2 landscape. However, Yakovenko did see value in some modular concepts being applied at the L1 level.

"The idea of having like a single rollup that can take up all of the bandwidth of the this data availability layer whether it's Solana or Celestia or Ethereum I think that idea is it's like something that I think a lot of the engineers agree is probably the more efficient design," he said.

Compressed NFTs and New Use Cases

One area of innovation Yakovenko highlighted was Solana's compressed NFTs. By dramatically reducing the cost of minting NFTs, this technology has enabled new business models and use cases.

"I really like compressed NFTs because I think that reduction in cost created two new business two new kinds of businesses like one is Drip the other one is Dialect," Yakovenko said. "I would really like to see more folks like lean into that like actually go try to imagine like what if you couldn't mint basically NFTs for like four users for free because the cost of the infra is so low."

He encouraged developers to explore novel applications enabled by near-zero cost NFTs, seeing potential for innovation beyond existing use cases.

Improving DAO Governance

Looking at areas for improvement in the Solana ecosystem, Yakovenko emphasized the need to "fix ecosystem DAO governance." He believes many governance failures in the last cycle could have been prevented with more robust, standardized structures.

"I think we need to basically fix ecosystem DAO governance like I think that's some those like looking back at the last cycle there's just been a bunch of failures that could have been prevented with just like some very common sounds basic structures that have existed in like corporate finance for you know hundreds of years probably at this point," Yakovenko said.

He suggested implementing delegation systems similar to proof-of-stake validators, with well-branded actors that users can delegate governance rights to. This could help align incentives and improve decision-making in DAOs.

Solana's Measure of Success

When asked how he would measure Solana's success, Yakovenko emphasized impact over vanity metrics like total value locked or market cap rankings. His vision is for Solana to coordinate hundreds of millions of people's cryptographic keys, enabling large-scale collaboration and decision-making.

"I think if crypto really grew like to the point that it has impact to a lot of people I don't really care about any of those metrics as long as Solana is actually coordinating you know hundreds of millions of people's private keys like that they're all actually transacting in the network and there's thousands of devs that are building applications," he said.

Yakovenko sees potential for blockchain technology to enable a form of global direct democracy. By giving people the ability to cryptographically sign and coordinate around shared goals, he believes transformative change is possible.

The Path Forward for Solana

Looking to the future, Yakovenko expressed excitement about continuing to optimize Solana's performance and expand its capabilities. He hopes to eventually return to working directly on the core protocol as an engineer.

In terms of ecosystem growth, he emphasized organic community-driven development over paid partnerships or marketing deals. Yakovenko believes Solana's technical advantages and growing developer ecosystem position it well for long-term success.

"I honestly think that like if we could give humans the cryptographic keys, it doesn't really like the networks will just emerge from that," he said. "The blockchains all the stuff like I think those are implementation details to a large degree."

As Solana continues to evolve, Yakovenko remains focused on the core vision of enabling fair, efficient, globally-accessible markets and coordination systems. By staying true to first principles and embracing continuous improvement, he believes Solana can play a transformative role in the future of finance, governance, and human collaboration.

Facts + Figures

• Solana's core thesis is to enable permissionless, fair markets by transmitting information equally and fairly around the world as fast as physics allows
• The final bottleneck for blockchain scalability is data availability (DA) bandwidth
• Solana aims to scale by increasing hardware capabilities over time rather than relying on sharding or layer 2 solutions
• Solana's design philosophy focuses on maximizing parallelization and efficiency across cores, disks, and network cards
• Solana separates programs and state, allowing for highly parallelized transaction processing
• Yakovenko argues that true decentralization manifests in a permissionless system with enough people invested to keep it running
• Compressed NFTs on Solana have enabled new business models by dramatically reducing minting costs
• Yakovenko emphasizes the need to improve DAO governance structures in the Solana ecosystem
• Solana's measure of success is coordinating hundreds of millions of people's cryptographic keys, not vanity metrics like TVL or market cap rankings
• Yakovenko sees potential for blockchain technology to enable a form of global direct democracy
• Solana focuses on organic community-driven development over paid partnerships or marketing deals
• The Fire Dancer team has demonstrated higher throughput on Solana through software architecture optimizations
• Yakovenko mentioned that 4 NVIDIA 1080 GPUs could process 1 million signatures per second in early Solana tests
• The Fire Dancer team achieved 1 million signatures per second with microsecond latency using old FPGAs available on AWS

Questions Answered

What is Solana's core thesis?

Solana's core thesis is to enable permissionless, fair markets on a global scale by creating a system where information can be transmitted and accessed equally and fairly around the world, as fast as physics allows. Unlike projects focused primarily on digital money or settlement layers, Solana aims to solve the hard problem of perfect information synchronization, which naturally leads to other benefits like efficient settlement.

How does Solana approach scalability differently from other blockchains?

Solana approaches scalability by focusing on maximizing bandwidth and compute capabilities, aiming to scale by increasing hardware capabilities over time. Rather than relying on sharding or layer 2 solutions, Solana is designed to leverage advancements in hardware to boost performance. This approach allows Solana to improve elastically as capabilities increase, without requiring fundamental redesigns to fully utilize next-generation hardware.

What are the advantages of Solana's parallel execution model?

Solana's parallel execution model, which separates programs and state, allows for highly parallelized transaction processing. This design, inspired by DSP and GPU architectures, requires developers to lay out memory dependencies in advance. While this requires more upfront work, it results in extremely efficient execution with minimal cache misses. This approach enables Solana to process transactions in parallel much more easily than chains with a global state model, though it does create some limitations in terms of composability.

How does Anatoly Yakovenko view decentralization in blockchain systems?

Yakovenko argues that true decentralization manifests in two key ways: the system being permissionless, allowing anyone to participate, and having enough people invested in the network to ensure it continues running even in the face of failures. He pushes back on the notion that lower hardware requirements necessarily lead to more decentralization, instead emphasizing the importance of incentives to run nodes over absolute cost.

What are compressed NFTs and why are they significant for Solana?

Compressed NFTs on Solana are a technological innovation that dramatically reduces the cost of minting NFTs. This reduction in cost has enabled new business models and use cases, such as Drip and Dialect. Yakovenko sees great potential in this technology, encouraging developers to explore novel applications enabled by near-zero cost NFTs, which could lead to innovation beyond existing use cases in the NFT space.