Yakovenko wants Solana to mint SOL to buy a company, but who would own it?

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has floated the idea of expanding $SOL’s supply, paying for a company with incremental tokens, then using the acquired business’s revenue to buy and burn $SOL. The posts sketch a tokenomic cycle, but leave its issuance and acquisition mechanics undefined.

In an Aug. 15 post, Yakovenko called the concept more bullish than simply lowering inflation. He clarified the next day that company revenue would fund $SOL purchases and burns, which he characterized as returning value to holders.

As of Aug. 18, the reviewed official merged-proposal directories contained no acquisition SGP or SIMD.

Protocol approval cannot buy a company with Solana

Solana’s current governance framework could supply a directional mandate. A validator vote account with at least 100,000 $SOL staked may submit a Solana 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.

That would answer whether stakeholders want to pursue the idea. A completed protocol change would normally require one or more technical proposals, client implementation, and activation under the SIMD process.

The Solana Foundation describes itself as a Zug-based nonprofit, while Solana Labs identifies itself as a separate company group. Validators and delegators are separate network participants, and the cited materials do not name either as the buyer or grant it acquisition authority for the network.

Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz responded sarcastically that validators would have to agree on running a company. A stake-weighted mandate would not identify a legal buyer, and the cited governance materials do not specify who could sign a purchase agreement, hold the asset, appoint management, or direct revenue.

Solana governance can approve protocol changes, while the legal buyer, operator, and revenue controller of a $SOL-funded acquisition may remain unspecified.

If newly issued $SOL were transferred to a seller, total supply would rise at issuance. A holder receiving none would then hold a smaller share of total supply unless, and only to the extent that, later burns reduced it.

A separate draft fee-burn proposal, SIMD-0553, estimates that Solana currently burns about 648 $SOL per day from signature fees alone at roughly 3,000 transactions per second, compared with about 60,000 $SOL of daily inflation.

Its staged resource-fee burns illustrate the scale of the existing gap, but the document contains no acquisition mechanism and does not authorize Yakovenko’s idea.

Until a formal proposal defines both tracks, control remains unresolved: validators and delegators could signal a direction, the SIMD process would still require technical specification, implementation and activation, and the corporate side would need to identify who selects the target, which legal entity buys and owns it, and who controls operations and revenue.

Source