Solana can’t appear to emerge absolutely from the shadow of its most infamous backer, Sam Bankman-Fried, particularly as its identify retains arising throughout his ongoing felony trial. Now, the inspiration behind the decentralized community is launching a bug bounty amid unconfirmed rumors that the ex-FTX chief had the flexibility to disable it.
Final week in court docket, former Alameda Analysis CEO Caroline Ellison informed federal prosecutors that FTX builders had the means to “turn on and off” the Solana blockchain at will. This alternate prompted questions and ridicule on Crypto Twitter about Solana– particularly its purportedly decentralized nature.
Amid these discussions, Jacob Creech, the pinnacle of developer relations on the Solana Basis, introduced a new bug bounty for anybody who may discover a flaw that might shut down the blockchain.
“FYI there’s a $400K reward for anybody that may discover code that may flip off Solana. Please go forward and discover it,” wrote Creech in a tweet on October 12. Creech didn’t return Decrypt’s request for touch upon the timing of the announcement.
It’s unknown how a single developer may feasibly shut down a decentralized blockchain, which is designed to forestall anybody entity from having management over it. Nevertheless, the bounty could possibly be essential to reassure the neighborhood that the system is protected from manipulation–and create further distance from FTX and Bankman-Fried.
Solana and its on-chain SOL token have been as soon as favorites of Bankman-Fried, who was a distinguished supporter of their growth. Earlier than its collapse, FTX provided a market for Solana NFTs and FTX invested in quite a few Solana-related initiatives.
After FTX collapsed, Solana was rocked by the fallout. Many DeFi initiatives on Solana scrambled to cut ties with Serum–a consortium based in August 2020 that included FTX, Alameda, and the Solana Basis–out of worry their non-public keys could possibly be compromised. These keys have been as soon as housed inside FTX.
Amid Bankman-Fried’s ongoing felony trial in Manhattan, Solana has been mentioned numerous times by witnesses, one thing that appeared to chop into the token’s worth final week. SOL, the eighth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has fallen 6% within the final week, in response to knowledge from CoinGecko.
Previous to the trial, a U.S. chapter court docket in Delaware gave the greenlight for FTX to begin emptying its chilly storage wallets of its remaining cryptocurrency, together with a giant stash of SOL. A court docket submitting on September 11 confirmed that the failed alternate nonetheless held $1.16 billion worth of SOL, which is roughly a third of its $3.4 billion portfolio.
Extra not too long ago, it was found by blockchain tracker Whale Alert that the trustees overseeing FTX’s chapter are staking about $122 million value of SOL. Staking is the process the place holders deposit their Ethereum-based tokens to validate blockchain transactions in return for rewards.
The FTX property is estimated to carry about $1.2 billion in SOL, and its attainable sale has led to considerations that a flood of extra tokens would drive down the value for present ones. Nevertheless, many of those tokens are nonetheless locked, that means they will’t be offered instantly, limiting potential impact on the token’s value.
