Edward Snowden Slams Solana As A Centralized System For Scams

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Edward Snowden, the famend whistleblower and privateness advocate, made sharp feedback about Solana throughout 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 tasks it facilitates.

Responding to the query, “How can we design expertise from first ideas so we all know it’s secure?” Snowden took the chance to attract comparisons between Bitcoin’s adversarial design and what he perceives as Solana’s extra weak, centralized system.

“While you look again on the Bitcoin whitepaper, I believe what you see is an adversarial method to the system. And that’s what you actually have to think about,” Snowden mentioned. With out immediately naming SOL at first, he shortly shifted to critique the community, stating, “I don’t wish to title names however Solana is taking good concepts and so they’re simply going, effectively what if we simply centralized the whole lot? 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 may make it weak to authorities management or different types of exterior intervention. “If anyone places something important on it after which all of the states start shifting in 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 pondering within the design of decentralized programs, particularly given the growing consideration crypto platforms are receiving from governments and regulators worldwide. “You need to be excited about the adversarial case versus the handy, simple early case. Meaning excited about the way it’s going to be attacked and ensuring it will probably survive that,” he mentioned.

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 assume Solana is centralized—whereas giving zero information to again it up,” Mumtaz wrote.

He referred to as for critics to supply concrete proof of any vulnerability in Solana that will permit a single entity to manage the community or compromise person funds. “I problem anybody to point out me the exact assault vector that will 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 range of jurisdictions they function inside.

He acknowledged that whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum are extra decentralized, this doesn’t inherently imply that Solana is weak to the type of centralized management Snowden alluded to. “Right here’s what chances are you’ll say as a substitute: Ethereum and Bitcoin are extra decentralized than Solana — that is right. Usain Bolt is quicker than Lebron James in a 100m sprint, that doesn’t imply Lebron is gradual. The one potential single level of failure could be: a single consumer,” Mumtaz wrote.

He highlighted latest developments in Solana’s consumer variety, mentioning the deployment of “frankendancer” on the mainnet, in addition to the upcoming “Firedancer” consumer, 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.