Co-founder of Solana described meme coins and NFTs as "digital trash"

The CEO of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, debated with Base creator Jesse Pollak about the fundamental value of meme coins and NFTs. Their discussion attracted the attention of the cryptocurrency community.

I’ve said this for years. Memecoins and NFTs are digital slop and have no intrinsic value. Like a mobile game loot box. People spend $150b a year on mobile gaming.

— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) July 27, 2025

"I have been saying for years that meme coins and NFT are digital garbage with no real value," wrote Yakovenko.

The co-founder of Solana compared these assets to loot boxes in mobile games, which generate revenue for developers but are often criticized for exploiting users. According to him, the value of "funny coins" and non-fungible tokens is determined solely by market demand.

Pollak responded, emphasizing that their value lies in the content.

the content itself is valuable. ads are a way to monetize that value. but the content itself is valuable. just like a painting is fundamentally valuable, regardless of whether you charge people at the museum to see it.

— jesse.base.eth (@jessepollak) July 27, 2025

"The content is valuable in itself. Just like in the case of a painting in a museum, for which people pay to view," said the creator of Base.

Community Reaction

Users criticized the statements of the co-founder of Solana, accusing him of a dismissive attitude towards his own community. Crypto enthusiast Karbon called Yakovenko's position on "funny coins" hypocritical.

I'm not a huge fan of how Vitalik handled memecoins (nuking them in 1 clip anytime someone sent them to his wallet) but I find Toly's approach much more distasteful, actively promoting them constantly while believing they're worthless

— karbon 🐺🦊 (@basedkarbon) July 28, 2025

"I don't really like how Vitalik deals with meme coins (, he just destroys tokens with one click when someone sends them to his wallet ). But Toli [Yakovенко]'s approach seems much less acceptable to me – he constantly promotes these coins, even though he himself considers them useless," he wrote.

Meme coins are the foundation of the Solana economy

In the course of the dispute with Pollak, Yakovenko admitted that Solana would not have achieved its current results without "funny coins". Two of the largest platforms for generating meme coins, LetsBonk and Pump.fun, operate on this network and are actively competing for leadership in the sector.

"Funny coins" bring significant profit to Solana. According to Syndica, in June they accounted for 62% of all revenue from dapps on the network.

Source: Syndica.In the first half of 2025, the project earned $1.6 billion thanks to meme coins. Platforms like Pump.fun and LetsBonk played a significant role in this.

Recall that on July 24, the Solana network increased the block capacity by 20% - to 60 million computing units (CU). Against the backdrop of this news, the price of SOL exceeded $200.