Solana Founder Names Biggest Hurdle to Mainstream Adoption

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko recently told business outlet Fortune that self-custody problems remain the main impediment to mainstream adoption.

While crypto offers the promise of permissionless money, it also comes with plenty of responsibilities related to safe storage.

Self-custody refers to the practice of owning your own private keys with the help of either hot wallets or hard wallets. For now, it is very cumbersome to store one’s own crypto, which is why many users tend to leave their tokens on exchanges despite the fact that it invalidates the whole point of crypto.

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Yakovenko is convinced that cryptocurrencies will not be able to reach mainstream acceptance as long as there is no user-friendly solution for self-custody. Security issues remain one of the main hurdles for mainstream adoption, according to the founder.

Solana stole the spotlight last year, becoming a viable alternative to Ethereum in the realm of decentralized finance and non-fungible tokens. Last week, Yakovenko predicted that NFTs could form a major entertainment franchise of the likes of Disney.

As reported by U.Today, Yakovenko recently predicted that Ethereum’s much-hyped Merge upgrade would not be a big deal for crypto due to the fact that there is a slew of functioning proof-of-stake blockchains.

In a Bloomberg interview that took place on Sept. 21, he pointed to the fact that the upgrade did not actually improve Ethereum’s scalability. At the same time, he did recognize the Merge as a positive development for the sector.