Alert: Deepfake Anatoly Yakovenko Video Targets Solana (SOL) Holders

10 months ago 7

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YouTube recently took down a new deepfake featuring Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. The Solana Foundation has warned of increasing deepfakes, seeking to capitalize on the recent increase in Solana’s total-value-locked (TVL).

The videos look convincing but have no connection to Solana or any of its projects. The foundation’s head of strategy, Austin Federa, said that the foundation reports scams it finds to platforms but has no power to take them down.

YouTube Ignores Anatoly Yakovenko Deepfake

The video featured Yakovenko announcing a historic day for Solana. He thanked the community and offered a giveaway via a QR code.

The video appeared on YouTube and social media platform X. One YouTube user reported seeing the video as an ad on the former. Federa added:

“There has been a substantial increase in deepfakes and other AI-generated content recently,”

However, taking down the videos is not easy. The Solana team reported the incident last night. YouTube only took the video down after news media reported the incident.

The delay is especially concerning, considering how hard deepfakes have become to spot. Such scams can have dire consequences when they are related to investments and finance.

Deepfake Accompanies Solana TVL Increase

The incident came as Solana experienced a surge in total-value-locked. According to DeFiLlama, a decentralized finance data aggregator, Solana’s TVL has almost doubled from $671 million in the first week of December to $1.35 billion. The increase may be due to Jito, a new protocol that allows validators to get the maximum extractable value (MEV) from each transaction on the blockchain.

Validators stake their or others’s cryptocurrencies for a chance to earn rewards for securing the network. Each transaction block can be constructed to maximize profits.

Jito allows validators to decide how to distribute profits to those who have staked coins. It also allows participating validators a ticket to liquid staking protocol, the Jeto network.

Altcoin Daily co-founder Austin Arnold said Solana benefits from faster speeds and cheaper transactions than Ethereum. However, Ethereum has better network effects and is more censorship-resistant. Therefore, Arnold suggests there will be a place for both networks in the future.

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