A controversial Solana ad highlights the woke/unwoke divide in crypto

A controversial Solana ad—which was deleted 9 hours after being posted—has sparked woke/unwoke divide on crypto X.

On March 17, Solana’s official X account posted a 2.5-minute ad. In the video, a man named “America” tells a therapist about his thoughts on innovation, like interplanetary travel, AI, and crypto. The therapist diagnoses him with “rational thinking syndrome” and suggests he focus on creating a new gender identity instead. America insists he’ll keep thinking about innovation and action, but the therapist advises him to shift his focus from verbs (like “doing” and “innovating”) to pronouns.

The ad was deleted 9 hours after being posted, despite having garnered 1.2 million views, with the crypto community divided over its tone and messaging.

Many called the ad “cringe“, “toxic,” and offensive, prompting several interesting takes on the current state of the culture war in crypto.

One user said that the ad was probably trying to “highlight the fact that USA woke up from the woke mind virus and is focusing on crypto,” stopping short of condoning in:

Others didn’t take the ad so seriously. For example, one user said that there was not anything in it to get mad about. If it was the pronoun part, he wrote, “that’s been pushed harder over the last four years than any real innovation.”

Joshua Jake from Discover Crypto called the ad “brilliant marketing.”

“Everyone crying that “crypto is supposed to be decentralized and apolitical” is missing the point entirely. The ad is designed to be cringy rage bait, and you’re all taking the bait—pushing its reach even further,” said Joshua.

Echoing Jake’s sentiment, disinformation researcher Mike Solana wrote:

“have you noticed people digging back to 2020 for unhinged article headlines, and posting them today for rage bait? that is because culture has changed, and people who built identities as demon slayers have no more demons left to slay. they will be turning on each other next.”

Another point of contention was the fact that Solana deleted the ad in response to the community backlash, saying it was an overreaction.

“Deleting it means Solana was shook,” one user remarked, pointing out that Solana would be better off if it focuses on the network’s issues rather than reacting to social media noise.

Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, said that Solana deleted the ad to avoid further damage to the business—not because they thought it was wrong.

Yesterday, Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko issued a public apology:

“The ad was bad, and it’s still gnawing at my soul. I am ashamed I downplayed it instead of just calling it what it is – mean and punching down on a marginalized group. I am grateful for the ecosystem devs and artists that immediately called it what it is both publicly and privately. You are the only silver lining to this whole mess. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure solana foundation stays focused on its mission of decentralization and open source software development and out of culture wars.”

In terms of market sentiment, SOL opened trading on March 17 at $126.17. But a few hours after the ad was posted, the price of SOL slightly dipped down to $125.50, with SOL closing out a the day $128.28.