The Solana Foundation has removed an advertisement from its official X account following criticism over its political messaging on gender identity.<\/p>\n
The ad, posted on March 17 to promote the Solana Accelerate conference, attracted negative commentary from the crypto community for its references to gender and pronouns.<\/p>\n
The video in question depicted a man, referred to as \u201cAmerica,\u201d speaking with a therapist about his thoughts on innovation and crypto. However, the professional dismissed his concerns and suggested he focus on coming up with a new gender and on pronouns instead.<\/p>\n
As the conversation continued, the man delivered a monologue set to patriotic music, declaring his intention to build on-chain, reclaim innovation, and invent technologies rather than genders.<\/p>\n
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, who recently disagreed<\/a> with the foundation\u2019s Executive Director Lily Liu over the now-rejected<\/a> SIMD-228 proposal, has since distanced himself from the campaign. He stated<\/a> that a previous marketing effort, the \u201cMaren ad,\u201d had been better. While the original post has been deleted, multiple users have reposted<\/a> it on the platform.<\/p>\n Several industry figures criticized the initiative for its handling of gender identity and its political tone. Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran pointed<\/a> out that it took Solana nine hours to delete the post. He also noted that major figures in its ecosystem initially supported the ad before removing their tweets and engagement with it.<\/p>\n \u201cThey approved this, supported it and celebrated it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey rolled it back because it hurt their business, not because they thought it was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Blocknative operating chief Sean O\u2019Connor called<\/a> the initiative \u201ctone-deaf,\u201d especially following recent policy changes in the U.S. President Donald Trump revoked executive orders from Joe Biden aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.<\/p>\n Tyler Bench, CRO of on-chain governance platform Tally.xyz, described<\/a> the campaign as highly problematic and likened it to previous Coinbase advertisements but with a more extreme tone. Anneri van der Merwe, product lead at Base, criticized<\/a> it as offensive and pandering, stating that it contradicted Solana\u2019s previous messaging about inclusivity.<\/p>\n Nicolas Pennie, co-founder of Solana development platform Helius, argued<\/a> that virtue signaling in marketing efforts would always be ineffective, regardless of political ideology. On his part, DoubleZero operating chief David McIntyre questioned<\/a> why the platform did not take a more positive approach instead of mocking social issues.<\/p>\n Some observers believe the intention was to attract people by causing controversy. Reka, CEO of DEX protocol Avnu.Fi suggested<\/a> that the marketing was designed purely for attention, stating that it prioritized controversy over creativity.<\/p>\n The post Solana Foundation Deletes Controversial Ad After Crypto Community Backlash<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Solana Foundation has removed an advertisement from its official X account following criticism over its political messaging on gender identity. The ad, posted on March 17 to promote the Solana Accelerate conference, attracted negative commentary from the crypto community for its references to gender and pronouns. Solana Co-founder Disapproves of the Campaign The video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":52795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Community Backlash<\/h2>\n