Solana deleted a controversial ad from its X account after facing backlash for being “tone-deaf” on gender issues and labeled as “cringe.”
Critics slammed Solana’s ad for its perceived insensitivity toward gender identity, prompting the blockchain network team to remove it.
The ad, which promoted the Solana Accelerate conference, featured a therapy session where a man portrayed as “America” shared his thoughts on innovation and crypto. Solana posted the ad on March 17 with the tagline “America is back. Time to Accelerate.”
In the ad, the therapist responds by suggesting that he spend his time “coming up with a new gender” and later recommends that he “focus on pronouns.”
As the exchange unfolds, the man eventually snaps and delivers a dramatic monologue over patriotic music. He proclaims his intent to “build onchain and reclaim my place as the beacon of innovation,” while pointedly stating that he wants “to invent technologies, not genders,” seemingly taking a jab at progressive beliefs.
The ad quickly gained traction, amassing over 1.2 million views, 1,300+ comments, and 1,400 reposts. Many people condemned its depiction of gender identity and its approach to a controversial political subject before Solana deleted it.
“They rolled it back because it hurt their business, not because they thought it was wrong,” Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran wrote replied X on March 18.
Solana has not issued an official statement regarding the ad’s deletion.
On X, Sean O’Connor, COO of Web3 infrastructure firm Blocknative, reacted by saying, “This is so fucking tone deaf.”
“At a time when trans people are getting denied passports and being erased by the government… this is the ad you put out?” he added.
On his first day back in the White House, Donald Trump nullified Joe Biden’s executive actions that aimed to combat discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation.
Trump also enacted a policy recognizing just two genders—male and female—while discontinuing the ability for Americans to select “X” as their passport gender marker.
DoubleZero’s operating chief, David McIntyre, described the ad as “horrendous” and criticized Solana for failing to stay positive. He argued that the company should have avoided “dunking on people and making light of serious cultural issues.”
On X, Helius co-founder Nicolas Pennie argued that “virtue signaling will always be cringe regardless of political ideology.”
Amid the criticism, some people who originally defended the ad have now retracted their support.
Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, announced on X that he deleted his original post supporting the ad “after some reflection.”
Before deleting his post, he described the ad as “bold and risky” and joked that the only improvement would have been casting former Vice President Kamala Harris as the therapist.
In his retraction statement, Jain said it would have been more effective to “focus on deeper culture war issues like the failings of the oppressor-oppressed world view, not surface culture war issues like pronouns,” and the ad could have sent a message “without alienating a portion of the audience.”
Earlier this month, Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, criticized Trump’s crypto reserve in a post on X. According to the Solana boss, the U.S. national crypto reserve is a bad idea due to government control, which harms decentralization.
Yakovenko suggested that if the U.S. must create a reserve, it would be better for individual states to control their own crypto holdings. President Trump signed the U.S national strategic reserve via an executive order shortly after.
