Key Highlights
- The token model suggests rewarding long-term holders and limiting investor access to prevent early sell-offs and market crashes.
- Recent memecoin crashes show small, low-liquidity tokens can swing wildly when big holders sell.
- Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade aims for faster transactions, supporting serious trading and long-term network growth.
Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko, better known as Toly, is taking aim at the “Pump and Dump” culture that has come to define early-stage token launches. He has outlined a detailed framework for early-stage crypto token launches, urging projects to rethink distribution strategies.
The co-founder suggests that the ideal model should include giving rewards to people who hold tokens for the long term, releasing a little over 20% of tokens on the launch day, and keeping investors’ access limited. Any investors should only be able to use their tokens a full year after the launch.
Toly emphasized that neither teams nor investors should unlock tokens at the Token Generation Event (TGE). Instead, he suggested distributing tokens through airdrops for core users or fair auctions.
He argued that the one-year unlock, although seemingly intimidating, provides a stable structure, letting secondary markets match sellers with buyers while the primary market anchors pricing. “Staking rewards long-term holders, much like funds with 10+ year timeframes get rewarded in early rounds,” Toly added.
Investor dumps highlight need for change
Recent market events highlight the necessity of such a model. Solana-based memecoin White Whale recently plummeted around 60% after its largest private holder offloaded $1.3 million in tokens. The sudden price drop caused panic selling across the market and sparked rumors of a “rug pull” on X.
On-chain data showed the main project wallet and early investors selling large amounts, while the market didn’t have enough buyers to absorb the sales, which made the drop worse.
The project team called the event a “liquidity event” and said they weren’t behind the sudden selling. They also noted they did some buybacks during the dip, highlighting just how easily small tokens with low trading activity can swing in price when big holders make moves.
Tokens with very few coins in circulation but a high total value leave little room for small traders to make gains. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, also noted earlier that if small projects rely too much on large early investors, the market can become unstable and long-term growth may be harder to achieve.
Toly’s suggestion fits well into the overall movement to make more robust token markets. First, capping the initial unlocked amount and focusing on loyal users helps stabilize the market. On the other hand, conducting a fair auction or an airdrop helps with the organic distribution of the tokens such that no single person dominates the market.
Solana’s ongoing network evolution
Toly’s proposal also comes amid Solana’s plans for major upgrades to its network. Analysts at Delphi Digital see 2026 as a big year to make Solana fast and reliable enough for serious trading.
One of the main updates, called Alpenglow, adds new systems named Votor and Rotor that let the network confirm transactions much faster—cutting the time from 12.8 seconds down to just 0.1–0.15 seconds. These improvements could make Solana more appealing for fast trading and bigger investors, while also making the network more useful for everyone.
Moreover, Toly recently emphasized that Solana must keep evolving. He said the network needs to stay genuinely useful by solving real problems for developers and users. If it stops improving, it could fall behind. He envisions a future where Solana’s growth provides real incentives for developers to contribute to the open-source project, helping the network stay strong and useful over time.
Also Read: Gen Z and Millennials More Confident in Crypto Than Boomers: OKX
