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

As one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency sector, Anatoly Yakovenko founded one of the most widely used blockchain platforms, Solana. Based on available 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 be between $500 million and $1.2 billion, with the wide range primarily due to recent significant fluctuations in the Solana token price.

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 showed an early talent for computer science and engineering, eventually earning a computer science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 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 critical to his innovations in the blockchain space. According to information disclosed by LinkedIn (as shown below), after graduation, he smoothly joined Qualcomm, where he worked on operating system-level software and distributed systems for over ten years, essentially doing the "heavy lifting," but this experience at a leading communications technology company also allowed Anatoly Yakovenko to accumulate deep expertise in building large-scale, high-throughput systems.

During his time at Qualcomm, Anatoly Yakovenko also participated in the development of technologies that required coordination across multiple devices and precise timing, a challenge that conceptually resembles blockchain consensus mechanisms. He later had a brief employment at Dropbox, which further deepened his understanding of the distributed computing challenges faced in consumer-oriented application areas.

How Did Anatoly Yakovenko Get Involved in Cryptocurrency?

Like many people, Anatoly Yakovenko initially entered the cryptocurrency field through Bitcoin mining. It is said that he and his friends used the profits from mining to subsidize the graphics processing unit costs for their side projects, which also allowed him to witness firsthand the scalability limitations of Bitcoin and Ethereum, with those networks able to handle only a limited number of transactions per second, leading to bottlenecks and high fees, appearing somewhat disconnected from mainstream applications.

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

In November 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko published a white paper that deeply described the "Proof of History" technology, a cryptographic method for creating a verifiable passage of time between events. This innovation allows network validators to process transactions in a predetermined order without the need for extensive communication between nodes, significantly improving potential throughput, and the Solana blockchain is fundamentally built upon this concept.

Soon, Anatoly Yakovenko recruited former Qualcomm colleagues Greg Fitzgerald and Stephen Akridge to help build the prototype. This team officially established 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 publication of the "Proof of History" white paper, serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Solana Labs (with key founding team members of Solana shown above). Solana Labs launched its first testnet in 2018, and then released the mainnet beta in March 2020, entering the market during the early days of the COVID 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 starting with "9QgXq" is widely rumored to be associated with Anatoly Yakovenko (as shown below), but it has yet to be confirmed. The wallet holds over 136,725 SOL tokens, the majority of which have been staked. Early transactions had transferred millions of SOL tokens into this address. This wallet address has been around for over five years, and if it indeed belongs to the co-founder of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko's holdings of SOL tokens would be valued at over 11 million dollars.

Additionally, tracking the historical transaction records of Anatoly Yakovenko's staking account reveals that this account has made large SOL transactions to several Solana addresses. For example, between August 2024 and November 2024, over 3 million SOL tokens were unstaked and transferred, of which over 1.5 million SOL tokens are still staked across multiple addresses, including 9E8zG, JQ5jC, A6mJn, and 7pgzZ. If these addresses also belong to Anatoly Yakovenko, then the value of his SOL token holdings would far exceed current estimates, with a current price calculation nearing 122 million dollars.

Another address suspected to be related to Anatoly Yakovenko is the Solana domain toly.sol, as his username on X is Toly. Tracing this domain reveals that its owner is an address starting with "86xCn," which currently holds various tokens valued at over 1.3 million dollars; however, the value is primarily composed of illiquid tokens, meaning the actual liquid value of the held tokens is only about 16,500 dollars, equivalent to 203.8 SOL.

Anatoly Yakovenko's Off-Chain Holdings Tracking

In addition to holding tokens, Anatoly Yakovenko also owns a significant equity stake in Solana Labs, the company primarily responsible for the development of the Solana protocol and its related infrastructure. Although the specific equity percentage has not been publicly disclosed, it is estimated that he holds about 5% to 10% of the shares of Solana Labs.

As a private company, Solana Labs' valuation has not been publicly disclosed. Solana Labs has conducted multiple rounds of financing in the past, with investors including notable venture capital firms such as a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Polychain Capital, and Multicoin Capital. These investments have elevated the company's valuation to several billion dollars, with many estimating its value to be between 5 billion to 8 billion dollars. Based on these valuations, the value of Anatoly Yakovenko's equity could range from 250 million to 800 million dollars, not including the tokens he personally holds.

Although Solana Labs' company valuation is still partially tied to the market performance of SOL tokens, the dual ownership structure of personal tokens and company equity provides Anatoly Yakovenko with a level of diversification in his wealth holdings. The price of SOL tokens may fluctuate significantly, but company equity represents a more stable asset, especially as Solana Labs' business scope expands 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 into giants within the Solana ecosystem, including liquidity staking service providers Jito Labs, Solayer, perpetual DEX Drift Protocol and Infinex, as well as staking infrastructure projects Helius.

Who Owns the Most Solana?

As an emerging blockchain, Solana has made significant progress since its inception. Today, the distribution of Solana tokens shows diverse characteristics, with holder types including institutional investors, exchanges, founders, and retail participants, with major institutional holders including the Solana treasury company, cryptocurrency exchanges that hold tokens on behalf of users, Solana ETFs, and staking service providers.

However, according to existing data analysis, the largest holder of SOL tokens is likely to be the bidder from the FTX bankruptcy auction. After the collapse of the centralized exchange FTX and its bankruptcy, the SOL tokens held by its assets were auctioned as part of the liquidation process. During this process, 41 million SOL tokens were sold, with Galaxy Digital and Pantera Capital acquiring the majority of the SOL tokens. Although these tokens are subject to lock-up and vesting plans, approximately 60-70% of the sold SOL tokens have been unlocked and may have already been sold. Taking this into consideration, Galaxy Digital may still hold around 6 to 8 million SOL, while Pantera may still hold about 3 to 5 million SOL.

In 2025, the Solana treasury company became a focal point. Due to the high transparency of their holdings, the largest SOL holder is the Solana treasury company Forward Industries (as shown below), which currently holds 6.9 million SOL tokens (valued at 583 million dollars), accounting for 1.115% of the total SOL supply. Other Solana treasury companies fall far behind, with the nine companies following Forward Industries collectively holding only 1.5% of the total SOL supply.

In the realm of custodial service providers, some centralized exchanges also offer SOL token custody services for 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 major holders of SOL tokens, with the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) holding over 5.5 million SOL tokens, making it the largest spot SOL ETF currently.

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

Anatoly Yakovenko's Net Worth Fluctuates Significantly with the Market

Over time, Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth is likely closely related to Solana's market performance, experiencing significant volatility in its stock price (the chart below illustrates the price trend of Solana tokens in recent years). In November 2021, when the SOL price reached approximately 260 dollars at a cyclical peak, the combined value of the tokens and company equity he held could have pushed his net worth above 2 billion dollars, potentially nearing 3 billion dollars, depending on the value of his shares in Solana Labs.

On the other hand, the 2022 crypto bear market severely compressed Anatoly Yakovenko's asset value, as the SOL price once fell below 10 dollars, causing the value of tokens he held to plummet over 95% from the peak. During this period, network outages and the close ties between Solana and FTX and Alameda Research further had negative impacts on token prices and ecosystem sentiment. Assuming Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth trends aligned with market fluctuations, his net worth may have dipped below 100 million dollars during the bear market.

However, as the market returns to a bull market from 2023 to 2025, Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth is likely to grow as well, coupled with the increasingly mature equity value of Solana Labs (currently estimated between 4 billion to 10 billion dollars), this may push Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth back to billions.

As of early 2026, the cryptocurrency market experienced a crash, and the Solana price fell below 100 dollars, with Anatoly Yakovenko's net worth estimate being maintained between 500 million to 1.2 billion dollars, depending on the liquidity of the held tokens and the equity valuation of Solana Labs.

Conclusion

As of early 2026, Anatoly Yakovenko remains one of the core architects of the digital economy, with his net worth fluctuating alongside the maturation of the Solana ecosystem. While the early 2026 cryptocurrency market crash has reduced his wealth from its peak of billions, his financial situation remains robust, primarily thanks to his equity stake in Solana Labs and a series of early investment projects.

From a hard-working engineer at an internet company for ten years to now building a blockchain capable of being compared with Bitcoin and Ethereum, Anatoly Yakovenko's influence on the crypto industry is evident. Solana has evolved from an initially high-speed blockchain to now becoming a hub integrating institutional finance, stablecoin payments, trading, and other functionalities, however, it seems that everything is just beginning.

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