Anatoly Yakovenko Net Worth: How Rich Is Solana’s Founder?

Blockchain engineer and Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko has an estimated net worth of more than $200 million. It is worth noting that his actual net worth could be substantially higher or lower, as there is little public information available regarding the scope of his crypto and traditional investments.

Who is Anatoly Yakovenko?

Yakovenko is a software engineer and founder of the Solana cryptocurrency. Image source: Solana Labs

Anatoly Yakovenko is a co-founder and CEO of Solana, a high-performance blockchain platform. Born in Ukraine in 1981, Yakovenko moved to the United States in the early 1990s. It was at this time that Yakovenko learned C, his first programming language.

During his college years amidst the height of the dot-com boom, Yakovenko was enamored by breakthrough software innovations and dreamed of “becoming the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates,” according to a Fortune interview. Yakovenko has a strong background in computer science and engineering, having previously worked as a software engineer at companies such as Qualcomm and Dropbox. 

Yakovenko has been closely involved in the blockchain industry for several years and has worked on various projects related to blockchain scalability and performance. In 2017, Yakovenko founded Solana, a high-performance layer 1 blockchain that boasts smart contract and decentralized applications (dApps) support and is capable of facilitating up to 65,000 transactions per second (TPS).

Yakovenko is also an avid poker player, having scored several notable finishes throughout his gambling career, including a win in the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Handed Championship in 2010 for roughly $1.3 million and a first-place finish in the 2005 Festa Al Lago III No-Limit Hold’em Championship for $700,000.

What is Anatoly Yakovenko’s net worth in 2023?

According to numerous online publications, Anatoly Yakovenko has an estimated net worth of $200 million. However, some sources claim the Ukrainian-born software engineer could have a billion-dollar net worth, although the veracity of these claims is questionable.

Given his early involvement in Solana, it is safe to assume that Yakovenko received a significant share of SOL tokens during the Solana token sale. While it is not known how many tokens he received, we do know that the founders of the Solana project received a 25% share of 500M+ SOL tokens.

SOL was initially sold to investors for 22 cents in 2020. The token quickly gained traction among crypto investors and reached an all-time high north of $259 in November 2021. While the token lost a significant chunk of its value since then, SOL is currently still trading more than 100x above its token sale price. 

After last year’s collapse of FTX, which was one of the main backers of Solana, some investors and many in the crypto community proclaimed the project “dead”. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth, as the development of the chain is still in full swing, making an investment in Solana a potentially lucrative play.

Anatoly Yakovenko’s investment history

Yakovenko is among the most prominent figures in the crypto industry. He regularly publishes blog posts tackling various topics related to blockchain technology and is still heavily involved in the development side of things. He is a systems engineer “through and through,” noted a general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Ali Yahya, when speaking to Fortune.

In addition to his deep involvement with Solana, Yakovenko has made several significant investments in other companies over the years. Here are the five most notable investments per his Crunchbase profile:

Slingshot Finance

Slingshot Finance is a financial services company that aims to disrupt the CeFi sector by allowing users easy access to Web3. It allows users to connect their crypto wallets and token price data aggregated from numerous crypto markets. 

Yakovenko participated in the Series A funding round for Slingshot Finance that closed in December 2021 and raised $15 million.

Qonto

Qonto is a money management platform that allows users to handle business accounts and transfers, invoices, expense reports, and bookkeeping. The service can be used by anyone from self-employed individuals to micro-enterprises and associations.

Qonto raised €486 million during their Series D funding round in January 2022, at a pre-money valuation of €3.9 billion. Yakovenko participated in the round, although his investment share is unknown.

Wayflyer

Wayflyer is an e-commerce funding platform that looks to help e-commerce businesses with funding and insight. So far, the company has helped over 1,500 businesses accelerate their growth.

Yakovenko was one of the 12 investors that participated in Waylfyer’s Series B in February 2022, which saw the company raise $150 million at a $1.5 billion market cap.

Cikalia

Cikalia is a Spanish-based instant property buyer that aims to reform the real estate markets for the digital age. Cikalia uses big data to make the buying and selling process more efficient and accessible to a broader range of customers.

In February 2022, Cikalia raised €75 million from four investors, one of which was the Solana founder.

Hivemapper

Hivemapper is a blockchain project that to supports a community-led initiative to create the world’s first decentralized map. Each Hivemapper user can help build the map by providing data through a specialized dashcam, which in turn rewards them with HONEY tokens.

Yakovenko participated in the company’s Series A financing round in April 2022, which raised $18 million. 

The bottom line: The exact scope of Yakovensko’s net worth is shrouded in mystery

Anatoly Yakovenko’s net worth is shrouded in mystery as there is virtually no publicly available data to pinpoint the scope of his wealth. What is known, however, suggests that Yakovenko has a multi-million dollar net worth, and potentially even a multi-billion dollar one.

Yakovenko was part of the Solana founding team that received 25% of all SOL tokens at their launch, and has participated in numerous financing rounds in a personal capacity in the last couple of years. If SOL were to reach $1,000 as some hope, Yakovenko could become one of the richest individuals in crypto.

If you want to learn more about the net worth of some of the most prominent figures in the crypto industry, make sure to check our articles on Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto, former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried, and Terra founder Do Kwon.