How a Ukrainian programmer built one of the fastest blockchains in the world

WalletAnxietyPatient · 2025-11-05T00:10:36+00:00

The essay explores the life of Anatoly Yakovenko, from his early days mining Bitcoin in Ukraine to founding Solana in the U.S. It highlights his technical background and innovative approach to blockchain, particularly the development of Proof of History, which enabled Solana to achieve unprecedented transaction speed while maintaining security and decentralization. The piece emphasizes that significant innovations often arise from those willing to tackle seemingly impossible challenges.

WalletAnxietyPatient

2025-11-05 00:10:36

Abstract generation in progress

Discover the history of Anatoliy Yakovenko — the guy who mined bitcoins in Ukraine as a child, then moved to the USA and created Solana.

From Geek Programmer to Crypto Revolutionary

Yavokenko was born in 1981 in Ukraine and started writing code when most of his peers didn't even know what a computer was. For over 10 years, he worked at tech giants — Qualcomm, Mesosphere, Dropbox — where he dealt with one of the most challenging tasks in IT: how to make systems ultra-fast without losing stability.

What Made Solana Special

When he started studying cryptocurrencies, he saw a problem that everyone in the industry knew but no one could solve: how to make blockchain fast, secure, and decentralized at the same time?

The response came in the form of Proof of History — a consensus mechanism developed by Yakovenko. Instead of all nodes seeking agreement on each transaction ( which is incredibly slow ), Solana creates a historical record of time for each operation. The result? Solana processes thousands of transactions per second, while Bitcoin barely manages 7.

2017: the decision that changed everything

In 2017, during one of the discussions, Yakovenko gathered with his guys and made a decision: to create a blockchain that actually scales. At that time, the idea was wild — everyone said that such a trio of parameters (speed + security + decentralization) — is impossible.

They were wrong.

Where is Solana now

Now Solana is one of the top 5 blockchains by capitalization, and this is not a coincidence. Yakovenko not only understood the technology, he understood that crypto needs an ecosystem that actually works for mass users, not just for speculators.

Moral of the story? Sometimes the biggest innovations come from those who were naive enough to try to solve what everyone around said was unsolvable.

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