The organizer of the Solana AI Hackathon angrily denounced: The Solana AI Hackathon should not be reduced to a "casino", and the cabal is a bad VC with no reputational baggage.

Author: 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. Prizes range from $5,000 to $30,000 and are designed to encourage serious Crypto x AI projects that can attract venture capital or launch their own tokens. Submissions open on December 15, where project teams can provide all project details, including the GitHub code repository, a 2-minute demo/pitch video, a 10-page pitch document, and more.

The Solana AI hackathon was so popular that it even gave rise to the phenomenon of currency FOMO. Yash Agarwal, the founder of SendAI, issued an article criticizing this phenomenon. The following is the full text of the content.

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 - bringing everyone together to participate in Crypto x AI Agents in person, which I am very optimistic about.

Over the past 1 month, it’s safe to say that the “Solana AI Hackathon” has not only become a signature, but has completely changed the landscape of Solana Agent. Completing 400+ projects in 15 days is no easy feat, and my team and I are proud of our contribution to growing Solana AI's market cap by $5-1 billion.

Of course at the beginning, due to this strange Crypto x AI Agent, I had a premonition that there would be related token releases. And if builders use tokens as a means of capital accumulation to build great products, that’s perfectly fine. All 8 tracks have also been carefully designed to encourage truly useful agents.

But I didn't know it at the time, but it would become a place for degens to speculate. Judging from the data, this hackathon only had more than 40,000 visitors in one week. Now, there are 2-3 hackathon projects every day with a market value of US$50 million, and the cumulative value exceeds US$500 million. The Solana AI Hackathon inadvertently became an AI token discovery platform.

status quo

• Submit projects in hackathons and appear in the Solana AI Hackathon project directory, leveraging Solana AI Hackathon/SendAI to enhance credibility
• Launch token → Sniped/promoted by whales and KOLs → Created buzz and received US$5-50 million in start-up capital
• In Degens’ view, early deployment of hackathon projects can potentially yield hundreds of times profit, and hackathons are the perfect place for speculation.

Nothing fancy - classic 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 fire narrative, there’s too much of a bubble right now.

While this is closer to a fair launch (similar to an ICO) – it’s not the best way forward.

Builders tend to be blind

Over-tokenization makes builders myopic and blind.

Currently, 90% of Crypto

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

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

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

Many developers know their product isn't scalable or feasible in practice, so they just keep pumping out demos or making haphazard "XXY" announcements. Name some real-time, scalable, real on-chain and agent products.

Cabal / Whales /KOLs are bad VCs **without the

baggage of reputation**

The cabal and whale players make this game very dirty: they make up stories ("With support from XX" - just a simple retweet or casually say "the technology is great") to steal the market supply or convince the builders Giving tokens allocations and pumps, pushing them in their degen groups, and then continuing to sell off (or will eventually sell off) hurts both retail investors and builders.

Please keep in mind that since they are launched via pump, most tokens have no staking restrictions.

Advice for builders

Don’t issue tokens for the sake of issuance – especially if you don’t own a significant portion of them. If you own less than 5% of the token - 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, you will quickly benefit from issuing $50 million-$100 million worth of tokens, but once the price corrects later, you will have no incentive to build - and a group of crappy token holders hope You continue to build because they have been brainwashed by some cabal into thinking it is "amazing technology".

Tokens are technically an asset, but emotionally they are also a huge liability. Issuing tokens is easy, but after managing them for the past 6 months and experiencing all of these downturns, I can tell you: managing them 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 mock or lash out at you.

It’s certainly fine to issue tokens and raise funds to build, just don’t rush to issue tokens if you’re not prepared.

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

If the answer is yes, then issue tokens. Properly assign to teams when released, if needed - as a full builder you have every right to build long-term wealth for your project, rather than a random cabal or whale player.

To the hackathon builders who have issued tokens but don’t have the foresight – have fun managing and we’ll talk about it in 6 months.

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

Umang developed Cleopetra in this hackathon, which is an Agent to improve the LP experience and to solve a real problem: improving the LP experience. There are currently no plans to launch a token, but we are harassed every day by fake tokens and Degens demanding the release of the CA.

If you are a weak builder without a vision, falling victim to these degens and issuing tokens will honestly not respect you as a builder. No matter whether the market value of your token rises to US$100 million or US$500 million, your name will be called when the time comes.

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

Stay strong, put "NO COINS" in your Twitter (X) bio, never hint at tokens, and keep building. There's really nothing you can do about fake coin offerings -there's no use fighting them. If someone is buying into something without doing any research, they deserve it - ignore them (and block them if they send you private messages).

To KOLs and Degens

For KOLs, please be responsible for what you promote – especially tokens. Guide builders well 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 prices drop.

Degens may be applicable to everyone - don't FOMO to buy something you don't understand or even don't want to understand just because your favorite KOL calls for orders. You'll end up being the loser in all this because you're after "quick money."

Hackathon results

Many of the biggest names in the industry have contacted me asking for:

• Token List or Preferred
• Hackathon results date
• Even hackathon results

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

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

blood sweat and tears

When the decision was made to start this hackathon, there was no funding or support from anyone - it was all a lot of hard work and tears, and driven by an intrinsic passion to grow Solana AI 10x. SendAI is an organization that was formed out of the Solana AI hackathon - we made this bet and it worked out really well.

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

To reduce guesswork, the difficult decision was also made to cancel the demo day and announce the results directly through Solana or SendAI. Don’t worry, developers, there’s something even more exciting than Demo Day to follow.

What 's next?

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

In any case, I am very optimistic about Crypto x AI Agents. This is definitely an area worth more than 100 billion US dollars. SendAI, the Solana AI Hackathon, and the Solana Agent toolkit are all fully autonomous public products and were delivered within the past month. The market isn't even ready for what we're going to do next.

While my brain was telling me to wait for the results to come out before posting this, I followed my heart and posted it now. As an industry, we need to speak out or we will soon see a catastrophe.

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

The above are purely personal opinions and do not represent anyone else’s. Non-financial advice. I will definitely write down my optimistic view on Crypto x AI Agents on another day, but I will not recommend any tokens.

Related reading: A quick look at the 12 high-quality entries of the Solana AI Hackathon in one article