Snowden questions Solana's over-centralization, Helius CEO fires back strongly
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Snowden questions Solana's over-centralization, Helius CEO fires back strongly
Snowden emphasized that while Solana has technical advantages in speed and efficiency, these benefits come at the cost of decentralization.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
The crypto world never runs short of verbal battles, but no one expected Snowden to join this round.
Yes, the Snowden referred to here is the former U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower, widely seen in the crypto industry as a symbol of resistance against centralized authority. Recently, at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, Snowden delivered remarks via video link and unexpectedly launched a public critique of the Solana blockchain, calling it highly centralized and warning that its centralized architecture makes it vulnerable to manipulation by nation-states and bad actors.
Snowden emphasized that while Solana enjoys technical advantages in speed and efficiency, these come at the cost of decentralization.
"Solana took good ideas and asked, 'What if we centralize everything? It’ll be faster, more efficient, cheaper… and besides meme coins and scams, nobody will use it,'" commented Snowden.
His criticism quickly ignited fierce debate within the crypto community. The question of whether Solana is truly centralized is not new—especially during the last crypto cycle, controversies surrounding SBF and repeated network outages fueled ongoing skepticism.
Meanwhile, developers from the Solana ecosystem have begun pushing back against Snowden.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, a Solana development platform, challenged Snowden on X (formerly Twitter), questioning his claims and demanding concrete data to back them up.
"It seems Snowden thinks Solana is centralized, yet provides no data to support this view.
I’d like to see someone actually show real evidence proving that any single entity can do whatever they want on this network—either draining funds or maintaining long-term control.
Show me with actual data how you would take over thousands of full nodes distributed across hundreds of geographic locations in different jurisdictions, countries, and under various governments.
If you can’t do that but still call Solana centralized, then you’re just talking nonsense."
He added:
"Sure, you can say Ethereum and Bitcoin are more decentralized than Solana—that’s fine.
Bolt is faster than LeBron James in a 100-meter sprint, but that doesn't mean James is slow.
The only possible single point of failure was reliance on a single client—but now Frankendancer is live on mainnet, so even that argument falls apart, let alone the upcoming full release of Firedancer and other clients.
If this network were really that centralized, it's worth tens of billions now—go ahead, try attacking it!"
Snowden’s critique comes at a time when Solana has been gaining attention for its low transaction costs and high processing speed. Institutions including VanEck predict Solana’s market cap could surge significantly due to its superior transaction efficiency, forecasting SOL’s price could rise to $330.
VanEck stated that Solana’s ability to process thousands of transactions per second—far exceeding Ethereum—positions it as a strong contender in DeFi and payments.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
深潮TechFlow
