Solana AI Hackathon organizer angrily denounced: Solana AI Hackathon should not be reduced to a "casino", the conspiracy group is a bad VC without reputation burden

Posted by Yash Agarwal , Founder of SendAI

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

On December 11, Solana announced the launch of the first Solana AI Hackathon, which aims to build AI agents and tools on Solana, powered by SEND AI. The prizes range from $5,000 to $30,000, and are intended to encourage serious Crypto x AI projects that can attract venture capital or launch their own tokens. Submissions will be open on December 15, where project teams can provide all project details, including GitHub code base, a 2-minute demo/pitch video, a 10-page pitch document, etc.

The Solana AI hackathon was so popular that it even led to the FOMO phenomenon. SendAI founder Yash Agarwal criticized this phenomenon in an article. The following is the full text.

When we launched this hackathon, we had a simple vision: make Solana the AI chain and grow it 10x.

Hackathons are the best opportunity to achieve this goal - to bring everyone together to participate in Crypto x AI Agents in person, which I am very optimistic about.

Over the past month, it’s safe to say that the Solana AI Hackathon has not only become a signature event, but has completely changed the Solana Agent landscape. Completing 400+ projects in 15 days is no small feat, and my team and I are proud to have contributed to adding $500-100 million in market value to Solana AI.

Of course, at the beginning, due to this strange Crypto x AI Agent, it was anticipated that there would be related tokens released. And it is completely fine if builders use tokens as a means of capital accumulation to build excellent products. For this purpose, all 8 tracks are carefully designed to encourage truly useful agents.

But at that time, I didn't know that this place would become a speculation place for degens. According to the data, this hackathon had only more than 40,000 visitors in 1 week. Now, there are 2-3 hackathon projects every day with a market value of 50 million US dollars, and the cumulative value exceeds 500 million US dollars. Solana AI hackathon accidentally became an AI token discovery platform.

status quo

• Submit projects in hackathons and appear in the Solana AI Hackathon project directory, using Solana AI Hackathon/SendAI to enhance credibility
• Launch tokens → Targeted/promoted by whales and KOLs → Create hype and get $5-50 million in startup funding
• In Degens' view, early deployment of hackathon projects can potentially yield a hundredfold return, and hackathons are the perfect place for speculation.

Nothing unusual here - typical power-law distribution driving speculation.

While it’s great to see some builders launching tokens and using them as a means of capital accumulation, as with any previous narrative that’s going viral, there’s too much froth right now.

While this is closer to a fair launch (similar to an ICO) — it is not the best direction forward.

Builders are approaching blindness

Over-tokenization makes builders short-sighted and blind.

Currently, 90% of Crypto x AI projects are like cat/dog meme coins, which is totally fine if you are fully aware of this, but many projects are touting their tokens as "utility tokens", which is a complete scam.

This phenomenon could cause long-term damage to real builders (especially weaker ones) - who are now forced to be short-sighted.

Most proxy/infrastructure projects have figured out that tokens are the best way to get attention: issue tokens → proxy/framework goes “viral” (but has no users) → tokens go up → everyone is happy.

Many projects just make random announcements or demos (even with a market cap of over $200M) to please the audience, and then whales/cabals preach to retail investors that this is "great technology".

Many developers know their products are not scalable or viable in practice and so just keep doing demos or making random “XXY” announcements. Name some live, scalable, real on-chain and agent products.

Cabal / Whales /KOLs are bad VCs without reputation baggage

Cabal and whale players make this game very dirty: they make up stories ("backed by XX" - just a simple retweet or a casual remark of "the technology is great") to grab market supply or convince builders to give token allocations and pump, promote in their degen groups, and then continue to sell (or will eventually sell), hurting retail investors and builders.

Keep in mind that most tokens have no lock-up restrictions due to being launched via pump.

Advice for builders

Don’t issue tokens for the sake of issuing — especially if you don’t own a significant portion of them. If you own less than 5% of the tokens — you won’t have any incentive to keep building once the price starts to fall.

Even if the token goes up in the short term and you get a quick benefit from issuing $50-100 million worth of tokens, once the price adjusts you have no incentive to build — and a bunch of crappy holders want you to keep building because they’ve been brainwashed by some cabal into thinking this is “awesome technology.”

A token is technically an asset, but it is also a huge liability emotionally. It is easy to issue a token, but having managed a token for the past 6 months and through all these downturns, I can tell you: managing a token is not fun. The token itself is a huge product that needs to be managed.

When the price drops, none of these communities, KOLs or cabals will do you any favors - you are alone. They may even laugh at or bash you.

It’s totally fine to issue tokens and raise money for construction, but don’t rush to issue tokens if you are not ready.

Think longer term and ask yourself: “Even if the token market cap is less than $500,000, would you build it in the next 6 months?”

If the answer is yes, then issue tokens. Distribute appropriately to the team when issuing, if needed - as a full builder, you have every right to accumulate long-term wealth for your project, not a random cabal or whale player.

To the hackathon builders who have launched a token but don’t have the vision — happy management, and discuss again in 6 months.

I won’t name or blame anyone here, but here’s a good example:

Umang developed Cleopetra in this hackathon, an agent to improve the LP experience, to solve a real problem: improving the LP experience. There are no plans to launch tokens yet, but every day they are harassed by fake tokens and Degens who demand the release of CA.

If you are a weak builder without vision and fall victim to these degens and token issuance, to be honest, there is no respect for you as a builder. It doesn't matter if your token market value rises to $100 million or $500 million, you will be called out when the time comes.

How to solve this problem if the token has not yet been launched?

Stay strong, put "no token" in your Twitter (X) bio, never hint at a token launch, and keep building. There's really nothing you can do about fake token launches - fighting them is useless. If anyone is still buying in without any research, they deserve it - ignore them (or block them if they PM).

To KOLs and Degens

For KOLs, please be responsible for what you promote — especially tokens. Guide good builders and don’t fall into the trap of quick token distribution or influence. You also don’t want to be seen as a scammer when the price drops.

Degens may apply to everyone - don't FOMO and buy something you don't understand or even want to understand just because your favorite KOL calls for it. You will eventually become the loser in all this because you are greedy for "quick money".

Hackathon Results

Many well-known people in the industry have contacted me to provide:

• Token List or Preferred
• Hackathon Results Date
• Even the hackathon results

At least 50+ private messages, some even offering bribes/token distribution schemes.

Unfortunately, the exact end date and final results will not be disclosed to anyone (including the judges, each of whom will have a separate form) until they are officially announced.

Blood, Sweat and Tears

When we decided to do this hackathon, there was no funding or support from anyone - it was all hard work and tears, and driven by an inherent passion to grow Solana AI 10x. SendAI was formed as an organization after the Solana AI hackathon - we made that bet and it worked out really well.

At this point, we want to take ethics seriously and do our best to be intellectually honest—no matter who you are.

In order to reduce speculation, a difficult decision was also made to cancel the demo day and announce the results directly through Solana or SendAI. Developers don’t have to worry, there will be more exciting events than the demo day later.

What's next?

To be honest, I don’t know yet what the best solution to the token issuance problem is in terms of capital structure. However, I hope to come up with something - I will also think about it in my free time. This is a recent problem (less than 1 month), so it’s too early to have a chance to solve it.

Anyway, very bullish on Crypto x AI Agents, this is definitely a $100 billion+ space. SendAI, Solana AI Hackathon, Solana Agent Toolkit, all are fully autonomous public products and delivered in the past month. The market is not even ready for what we are going to do next.

When my brain told me to wait for the results to come out before publishing this article, I followed my heart and published it now. As an industry, we need to speak out loudly, otherwise we will see a big disaster soon.

May all go well. Casinos continue to exist. The house always wins…

The above is purely my personal opinion and does not represent anyone else. It is not financial advice. I will definitely write about my optimistic views on Crypto x AI Agents on a later date, but I will not recommend any tokens.

Related reading: A quick look at the 12 high-quality projects in the Solana AI Hackathon