Yakovenko proposes minting SOL to buy company, ownership unclear

On Aug. 15 Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko proposed minting additional SOL tokens to purchase a company. He clarified on Aug. 16 that the acquired business’s revenue would be used to buy and burn SOL.

Yakovenko outlined a cycle in which newly issued SOL would be transferred to a seller to complete an acquisition, and later the company’s cash flows would fund market purchases and token burns. He wrote that revenue would ‘return value to holders’ and could be ‘more bullish than simply lowering inflation.’

Solana’s on-chain governance can register stakeholder intent but does not assign legal authority to buy or run a firm. A validator vote account with at least 100,000 SOL staked may submit a governance proposal. Support from 15% of active stake opens voting, and approval requires two-thirds of decisive stake. Individual delegators can override their validator’s vote.

Protocol-level changes would normally require one or more technical proposals, client implementations and activation under the Solana Improvement and Maintenance Deployment (SIMD) process. The governance process cited by Yakovenko does not name a legal buyer or provide a transfer mechanism for corporate acquisitions.

Legal arrangements are not specified in the governance materials Yakovenko referenced. The Solana Foundation is described as a Zug-based nonprofit and Solana Labs is a separate company group. Validators and delegators are distinct network participants. The governance rules do not identify which entity could sign a purchase agreement, hold title to a company, appoint management or direct revenue.

Reaction included a sarcastic response from Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz, who noted that validators would effectively need to agree on running a company. The proposal and the cited governance framework do not name an operating entity or outline how to transfer legal control of an acquisition.

Economic questions were flagged. Minting new SOL for a purchase would increase total supply at issuance. Holders who do not receive newly issued tokens would hold a smaller share of supply until later burns reduced supply. A draft SIMD fee-burn proposal, SIMD-0553, estimates current signature-fee burns at about 648 SOL per day at roughly 3,000 transactions per second, compared with about 60,000 SOL of daily inflation. SIMD-0553 outlines staged resource-fee burns but contains no acquisition mechanism and does not authorize Yakovenko’s plan.

To move beyond concept, stakeholders would need an on-chain mandate plus SIMD technical specifications, client implementations and activation. Off-chain, an identifiable legal buyer and operating entity would be required to negotiate and sign acquisition documents, take ownership, appoint management and control how revenue is used for buybacks and burns. No formal proposal currently defines both the token issuance mechanics and the legal arrangements for ownership and revenue control.