Debate has accelerated in recent days over the future prospects of Solana, a layer 1 smart-contract blockchain that in some respects competes with Ethereum. The chain grew rapidly and saw immense hype during the 2020-2021 bull market, particularly from venture capitalists. But the recent departure of major projects to other chains and a massive drop in total value on the Solana chain have raised questions about its future prospects.

Lingering technological challenges are a common worry cited by doubters. Competition from Ethereum layer 2s represent a growing threat to Solana’s core premise of faster and lower-cost transactions. But the biggest cloud shading Solana’s sunshine is the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX exchange and hedge fund Alameda Research.

David Z. Morris is CoinDesk’s chief insights columnist.

Bankman-Fried was perhaps the single most prominent backer of Solana, and skeptics could reasonably argue that the price appreciation of the SOL token and related assets from 2020-2021 was driven at least in part by Bankman-Fried’s market interventions and advocacy.

The consequences of growing Solana skepticism have been dire, based purely on numbers. From a peak price of $258.78 on Nov. 6, 2021, Solana’s SOL token has declined to just over $10. That’s a drop of 96%, vastly sharper than the drawdowns from the peaks for BTC (-74.5%) and ETH (-74.6%). It’s even a sharper drop, incredibly, than dogecoin (DOGE) has seen in the bear market – the meme coin is down a mere 76% from its October 2021 peak.

From its position as the fifth-most valuable crypto token in early November, Solana’s SOL token has dropped to 19th place, according to data from CoinGecko.

The total value of tokens staked in decentralized-finance (DeFi) protocols on Solana has declined even more dramatically, from nearly $10.2 billion on Nov. 9, 2021 to under $210 million at press time – a decline of nearly 98%. Solana is now only the 12th-largest DeFi chain by total value locked or TVL, trailing not only Ethereum layer 2s like Polygon and Optimism, but also far more obscure projects like Cronos and DefiChain.

The single sharpest percentage drop in Solana’s metrics came in early November following the collapse of FTX, and mounting evidence of massive fraud by Sam Bankman-Fried. It now seems increasingly likely that some of Bankman-Fried’s extensive support for the chain was funded via FTX’s wholesale theft of customer funds.

Former Alameda executives including CEO Caroline Ellison, moreover, have claimed in recent statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Bankman-Fried encouraged market manipulation of FTX’s FTT token. Given that, it seems improbable that Bankman-Fried wasn’t also manipulating the price of Solana-based projects he helped launch, controlled large stakes in