Author: 0xKira, Arkham

Compiled by: Moni, Odaily Planet Daily

Anatoly Yakovenko (@toly) is the creator of the Solana blockchain, who has become a leading figure in the blockchain industry and a well-known billionaire. This article will explore his personal wealth.

As one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency field, Anatoly Yakovenko founded one of the most widely used blockchain platforms, Solana. Based on current information, as well as the number of tokens he personally holds and his equity stake in Solana Labs, it is estimated that his net worth in 2026 could range from $500 million to $1.2 billion. The large numeric range is primarily due to the significant price fluctuations of Solana tokens recently.

Anatoly Yakovenko's Early Life

Anatoly Yakovenko was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States with his family in the early 1990s, settling in Illinois. He displayed a talent for computer science and engineering from a young age and ultimately earned a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is one of the top institutions in the field in the United States.

Anatoly Yakovenko's academic background focused on distributed systems and compression algorithms, which later proved essential for his innovations in the blockchain field. According to information disclosed on LinkedIn (as shown in the figure below), after graduating, he successfully joined Qualcomm, where he worked in operating system-level software and distributed systems for over ten years. This experience also allowed Anatoly Yakovenko to accumulate a solid expertise in building large-scale, high-throughput systems.

During his time at Qualcomm, Anatoly Yakovenko was also involved in technology research and development that required coordinating across multiple devices and maintaining precise timing. This challenge conceptually resembles the consensus mechanisms in blockchain. He later worked briefly at Dropbox, further deepening his understanding of the challenges of distributed computing in consumer-facing applications.

How Did Anatoly Yakovenko Get Involved in the Cryptocurrency Field?

Like many, Anatoly Yakovenko initially ventured into the cryptocurrency field through Bitcoin mining. It is reported that he and his friends used the profits from mining to subsidize the costs of their joint side project’s graphics processing units. This experience also allowed him to witness firsthand the scalability limitations of Bitcoin and Ethereum, as these networks could only handle a limited number of transactions per second, leading to bottlenecks and high transaction fees that seemed incompatible with mainstream applications.

Anatoly Yakovenko did not view these limitations as inherent flaws of blockchain technology but began to explore whether technologies from other fields could address throughput issues. He drew inspiration from his telecommunications background, particularly the idea of using time itself as a reliable reference point in distributed systems.

In November 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko published a white paper that extensively described the "Proof of History" technology, which is a cryptographic technique used to create verifiable time elapse between events. This innovation allows network validators to process transactions in a predetermined order without the need for extensive communication between nodes, significantly increasing potential throughput, with the Solana blockchain built on this concept.

Soon, Anatoly Yakovenko recruited former Qualcomm colleagues Greg Fitzgerald and Stephen Akridge to help build a prototype. The team officially founded Solana Labs in 2018 and secured initial funding for development. One of the co-founders of Solana, Raj Gokal, also joined the project shortly after the "Proof-of-History" white paper was released, serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Solana Labs (as shown in the figure of the core founding team). Solana Labs launched its first testnet in 2018, followed by the mainnet beta in March 2020, entering the market at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anatoly Yakovenko's On-Chain Holdings Tracking

When Solana launched, a total of 500 million SOL tokens were minted, with 12.5% allocated to the founding team, including Anatoly Yakovenko. A Solana address beginning with "9QgXq" is widely rumored to be associated with Anatoly Yakovenko (as shown in the figure below), but has yet to be confirmed. This wallet holds over 136,725 SOL tokens, most of which are staked. Early transactions transferred millions of SOL tokens to this address. This wallet address has been around for over five years, and if it truly belongs to Solana's co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, the value of his SOL tokens would exceed $11 million.

Additionally, tracking the historical transaction records of Anatoly Yakovenko's staked accounts reveals that these accounts have made large SOL transactions to several Solana addresses. For example, from August to November 2024, over 3 million SOL tokens were unstaked and transferred, with over 1.5 million SOL tokens still staked across multiple addresses, including 9E8zG, JQ5jC, A6mJn, and 7pgzZ. If these addresses also belong to Anatoly Yakovenko, the value of his SOL holdings would far exceed current estimates, calculating at current prices would approach $122 million.

Another address suspected to be related to Anatoly Yakovenko is the Solana domain toly.sol, because Anatoly Yakovenko's username on X is Toly. Tracking this domain reveals that its owner is an address beginning with "86xCn," which currently holds over $1.3 million worth of various tokens. However, the value of this address is mainly based on illiquid tokens, so the actual liquid value of the tokens held is only about $16,500, equivalent to 203.8 SOL.

Anatoly Yakovenko's Off-Chain Holdings Tracking

In addition to holding tokens, Anatoly Yakovenko also holds a substantial equity in Solana Labs, which is currently responsible for the development of the Solana protocol and its associated infrastructure. While the exact ownership percentage has not been publicly disclosed, it is estimated that he owns about 5% to 10% of Solana Labs.

As a private company, Solana Labs' valuation has not been publicly disclosed. Solana Labs has gone through multiple rounds of fundraising, with investors including well-known venture capital firms such as a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Polychain Capital, and Multicoin Capital. These investments have driven the company's valuation into the billions, with many estimating its worth to be between $5 billion and $8 billion. Based on these valuations, Anatoly Yakovenko's equity could be valued between $250 million and $800 million, not including his personally held tokens.

While the valuation of Solana Labs is still partially linked to the market performance of SOL tokens, the dual ownership structure of personally held tokens and company equity provides some diversification for Anatoly Yakovenko's wealth holdings. The price of SOL tokens may fluctuate greatly, but company equity represents a more stable asset, especially as Solana Labs' business scope has expanded from protocol development to other blockchain infrastructure projects.

In addition to holding shares in Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko is also an active angel investor, having invested in over 40 companies. Some of these companies have grown to be giants within the Solana ecosystem, including liquid staking service providers Jito Labs, Solayer, perpetual DEX Drift Protocol and Infinex, as well as staking infrastructure projects Helius.

Who Holds the Most Solana?

As an emerging blockchain, Solana has made significant progress since its inception. Today, the distribution of Solana tokens exhibits a diverse characteristic, with holder types including institutional investors, exchanges, founders, and retail participants. The main institutional holders include Solana Foundation, cryptocurrency exchanges holding tokens on behalf of users, Solana ETFs, and staking service providers.

However, based on current data analysis, the largest holder of SOL tokens is likely the winner of the FTX bankruptcy auction. Following the collapse of centralized exchange FTX, the SOL tokens held by its assets were auctioned off as part of the liquidation process. During this process, 41 million SOL tokens were sold, with Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital acquiring most of them. Although these tokens are subject to lock-up and vesting schedules, approximately 60-70% of the sold SOL tokens have likely been unlocked and may have already been sold. Considering this, Galaxy Digital may still hold about 6-8 million SOL tokens, while Pantera may still hold about 3-5 million SOL tokens.

In 2025, the Solana Foundation became a focus. Due to the highly transparent nature of token holdings, the largest SOL holder is Solana Foundation Forward Industries (as shown in the figure below), which currently holds 6.9 million SOL tokens (valued at $583 million), accounting for 1.115% of the total supply of SOL. Other Solana Foundations are far behind, with the nine companies following Forward Industries collectively holding only 1.5% of the total supply of SOL.

In terms of custodial service providers, several centralized exchanges also offer SOL token custody services for their users. For example, Binance's latest proof of reserves shows that the exchange holds over 24.2 million SOL tokens. Similarly, ETF providers have also become one of the main holders of SOL tokens, including Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), which holds over 5.5 million SOL tokens and is currently the largest spot SOL ETF.

Among individual holders, while Anatoly Yakovenko may rank high, he may not necessarily be the individual holding the most SOL tokens, as other co-founders of Solana Labs and early team members also received a considerable number of SOL token allocations. Additionally, some early private investors' SOL holdings may even exceed those of the co-founders of Solana Labs.

Anatoly Yakovenko's Net Worth Fluctuates with the Market

Over time, Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth is likely closely related to Solana's market performance, experiencing severe fluctuations in its stock price (the figure below shows the price trend of Solana tokens in recent years). In November 2021, when the price of SOL reached a cyclical high of about $260, the sum of his held tokens and company equity could have pushed his net worth over $2 billion, potentially approaching $3 billion, depending on the value of his holdings in Solana Labs.

On the other hand, the crypto bear market of 2022 severely compressed Anatoly Yakovenko's asset value. As SOL prices once fell below $10, the value of the tokens he held also dropped by over 95% from peak values. During this time, network outages, and the close association of Solana with FTX and Alameda Research, further adversely affected token prices and ecosystem sentiment. Assuming that Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth trends align with market fluctuations, it could have dropped below $100 million during the bear market.

However, as the market returns to a bull trend between 2023 and 2025, Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth is likely to grow as well, along with the increasingly mature equity value of Solana Labs (currently estimated at between $4 billion and $10 billion), potentially pushing Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth back up to billions.

At the beginning of 2026, the cryptocurrency market experienced a crash, and the price of Solana also fell below $100. Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth estimate basically remains between $500 million and $1.2 billion, depending on the liquidity of the held tokens and the valuation of the equity holding in Solana Labs.

Conclusion

As of early 2026, Anatoly Yakovenko remains one of the core architects of the digital economy, with his net worth fluctuating as the Solana ecosystem matures. Although the crash of the crypto market in early 2026 has reduced his wealth from a peak of billions, his financial situation remains healthy, mainly due to his equity in Solana Labs and a series of early investment projects.

From a hard-working engineer in a networking company to a crypto billionaire building a blockchain that rivals Bitcoin and Ethereum, Anatoly Yakovenko's impact on the crypto industry is evident. Solana has evolved from an initially high-speed blockchain into a hub that integrates institutional finance, stablecoin payments, trading, and more, yet it seems that everything has only just begun.

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