‘I probably FUD Solana the most out of anybody’

Mert Mumtaz left Coinbase to discovered Solana developer instruments agency Helius in June 2022. However only a few months later FTX collapsed, taking the value of SOL down 60% with it.

Solana had soared to its all-time excessive of $260 a 12 months earlier, in November 2021, thanks partially to its high-profile champion, billionaire FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

However when it grew to become obvious SBF was headed to jail over the $8 billion fraud, many thought Solana may by no means get better. However when you assume Mumtaz was anxious about his fledgling firm’s future, you’d be improper.

“It stored happening,” Mumtaz, 29, tells Journal throughout an interview in Singapore. “It hit $8 at one level and I nonetheless had zero doubts.”

For the developer, who had additionally labored for main Canadian banks earlier than devoting himself to Solana, clearing out the dangerous actors truly appeared like factor. And whereas the blockchain had suffered a whole lot of dangerous publicity that 12 months over chain halts, he additionally knew the spam downside had largely been addressed. 

“Individuals didn’t see it that means, as a result of they thought that the chain was profitable due to FTX,” he recollects.

“However since we have been already constructing on it, our numbers have been going up. So we have been getting extra builders week after week, month after month,” he says. “And I used to be like, ‘This isn’t true.’ And in reality, since we’re tremendous technical, we noticed that there have been a bunch of enhancements that have been made to the community that really made it a lot better than earlier than.”

SBF’s departure had left a gap for a brand new high-profile Solana champion, and Mumtaz’s unshakeable conviction within the venture made him the right candidate.

“It occurred to me that folks have so many basic misunderstandings of how Solana works that any individual must exit on Twitter, which is the place the dialogue occurs, and be like, ‘No, like, you’re improper, and listed here are the information to again this up.’”

“That’s after I began to kind of grow to be a reply man. And each time folks would publish one thing, I’d simply say, ‘Nicely, that’s incorrect. Listed here are the information.’ And principally simply stored doing that for… I imply, I nonetheless haven’t stopped.”

Trolling his approach to success

Mumtaz appears a little bit grey as we speak, having simply survived 4 days of “meals poisoning, the worst ever.” On X he’s been complaining about nicotine withdrawal, as his beloved Zyns aren’t authorized in Singapore, and caffeine withdrawal after he gave up espresso.

He grins although and says concerning the posts: “I’m simply trolling largely.”

His trolling capability, mixed with a pointy mind and deep technical data, has seen Mumtaz emerge as one of many greatest personalities on Crypto X.  Over the previous month he was crypto’s prime key opinion later, forward of influencer Ansem, Base builder Jesse Pollak and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin.

A minimum of a few of Solana’s spectacular turnaround since 2022 will be attributed to his incessant bull posting.

Mumtaz will struggle anybody he believes is spreading bullshit about Solana — even difficult Edward Snowden to a verbal duel over his current declare that Solana is centralized.

It’s been a fast rise to prominence given he solely found Solana in 2021 whereas working at Coinbase. His early efforts speaking up Solana when he had only a handful of followers caught the eye of contributor Armani Ferrante, the Solana Basis and later the blockchain’s founder Anatoly “Toly” Yakovenko.

“All people from Solana began following me round that point, as a result of, as a basis, it’s a nasty look to only exit and say a bunch of stuff like: ‘Our chain is best than yours’ and stuff, however I might try this. And they also appreciated that.”

Mert Mumtaz: Greater than only a Solana maxi

One of the best factor about Mumtaz is that whereas he positively spends a whole lot of time speaking up Solana, he’s not completely a one-eyed maxi and has invested in Cosmos chains, Monad and even Ethereum L2s.

“I additionally shit on Solana fairly incessantly, which individuals sort of appear to overlook, like I in all probability FUD Solana essentially the most out of anyone I’m conscious of,” he says.

“Basically, I’m an engineer, and I care concerning the programs being higher. I do assume Solana is one of the best system, but it surely’s definitely not the one system, and it’s additionally not an ideal system,” he says.

He’s challenged the Solana Basis for issuing deceptive stats about Solana’s nodes and Ethereum’s Nakamoto coefficient rating. He doesn’t just like the extensively derided “community extensions” time period for Solana L2s.This week he steered a podcaster grill Toly about whether or not Solana has a “moat in a world the place each chain is quick, scalable and low-cost.”

He’s focused accounts that promote doubtful statistics, just like the chart suggesting that Solana has 100 million month-to-month lively addresses (critics argue the stats are inflatedand comprise mostlybots).

When Altcoin Each day posted a chart displaying Solana has 5 million every day lively customers, herepostedit, saying, “No, it doesn’t. everybody fuck off with this ineffective stat.”

He’s additionally taken goal at Solana’s famously horrible block explorer and not too long ago posted about Solana’s ABI downside with “unreadable explorers, inconsistent stats, always damaged ecosystem integrations (pockets histories, contract calls), and so on.”

“Can somebody assist me perceive why noone appears to offer a fuck.”

He tells Journal, “This is among the issues that Ethereum does a lot better than Solana.”

Mumtaz explains that Solana is optimized for effectivity, and coded in a means that appears like a “bunch of random hashes and strings” onchain and requires “a schema from the good contract to decode it.”

However he says there’s no central place for folks to publish their schemas. “And since chunk of the code is just not open supply, it’s very arduous to grasp what’s happening,” he says.

“Whereas EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine] it’s a lot easier, like Etherscan has principally all these folks truly publish it there, and we simply don’t have that very same course of on Solana. However it’s a solvable downside. And so that is sort of what I used to be attempting to say earlier, which is that Solana works, but it surely wants a whole lot of tooling to make it really nice, which is why Helius exists.”

Helius is changing into as essential to Solana as Consensys is to Ethereum, and it fulfills an identical position.

So who’s Mert Mumtaz?

Born in Istanbul Turkey, the household moved to Niagara Falls when Mumtaz was a child after his dad began to grow to be alarmed on the affect of conservative strongman chief Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  

“I truly went to the identical highschool that James Cameron went to,” he says of Stamford Collegiate in Niagara Falls. “It’s like, the worst highschool in Canada by rating.” Mumtaz additionally notes he went to the identical college as Elon Musk, and the identical extremely selective math program as longevity professional Peter Attia.

Additionally learn: 5 risks to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins

Nicely-built, Mumtaz devoted a whole lot of time to rugby, soccer, wrestling and kickboxing and never a lot time to check.

“I used to be very into fight sports activities, which is the place I used to get my anger out, let’s say, as an alternative of Twitter,” he explains. He initially deliberate to attend Queens College on a sports activities scholarship however later realized:

“If I wish to be an entrepreneur and construct issues and, you understand, use my mind. I ought to in all probability not be getting hit within the head an excessive amount of.”

He went into extra element on this story on X final week, attributing his change of coronary heart to getting his ass kicked by “tiny ass dudes in robes with books” within the sport Skyrim.

“I obtained rekt so arduous and rage stop after which had a hilarious realization: data is way more helpful than actually the rest on earth.”

As a substitute of MMA and rugby, he refocused his consideration on math and science and ended up learning for an engineering diploma. He was accepted into the elite Apple Math utilized arithmetic program, which solely accepts 30 folks a 12 months.

“That’s truly the place I met my co-founders for Helius, Liam (Vovk) and Nick (Pennie).”

The three grew to become quick associates, and Vovk and Mumtaz spent 5 years as roommates. Mumtaz’s plan to pursue a PhD in Physics obtained sidetracked by a year-long internship at Blackberry. Watching the tech firm roll out new fashions and updates made him wanting to have an effect in the actual world as an alternative of academia or summary math.

“I simply preferred the method of delivery issues that folks use, it’s way more thrilling than doing a PhD in science. And so after I got here again, I principally simply gentle stop faculty.”

In his spare time he’d attempt to construct stuff, like his try to construct an early ChatGPT system that was a keyboard autocomplete. Ethereum was choosing up velocity round that point, and though he fielded affords from tasks doing issues like “constructing the training system, however on blockchains,” not one of the use instances appeared that inspiring.

As a substitute, he ended up working for 3 of the 5 greatest banks in Canada in cybersecurity, buying and selling infrastructure, digital funds and ATM withdrawal programs.

He was constructing fee programs for tech entrepreneur Michele Romanow’s Clearbanc when the penny lastly dropped about crypto in early 2021.

“There was a day the place I needed to construct a system that sends cash to Australia from Canada, and it was actually inefficient as a result of it needed to leap by way of all these jurisdictions,” he says. “I used to be like, ‘Why don’t we simply use one thing like Ethereum to make this a lot simpler and simply save everyone cash and complications?’ And principally, folks simply didn’t consider in crypto.”

“So I obtained upset with that mind-set.”

Mert joins Coinbase and discovers Solana

He ditched the world of banking and joined Coinbase as an engineer on the platform crew about “every week earlier than it listed” in April 2021.

“Once I joined, it was nonetheless startup vibes, and comparatively early, and a lot of the bull run hadn’t actually occurred but,” he recollects. “It wasn’t till Coinbase went public the place all the things began going insane.”

Throughout his time on the trade, he began researching crypto tasks in additional depth, Polkadot and Avalanche earlier than Solana caught his eye. He says it appealed as a result of “it was constructed as a communication system like Toly’s background is cell towers and stuff like that.”

Given his personal communications engineering background, “I used to be like this truly makes a whole lot of sense. And no one else is tackling it this manner. So I simply began constructing stuff on Solana in my very own time,” he says.

“At one level I’d constructed a lot of the NFT bots that the ecosystem used.”

However attempting to combine Solana into Coinbase’s programs underlined simply how far forward Ethereum was in developer instruments and with Etherscan. However, rivals had overtaken Ethereum in scaling potential.

“The thought I had was ‘OK we are able to both wait like 5, six years for the Ethereum roadmap to settle itself out till issues begin scaling, or we are able to construct on Solana as we speak’.”

“And so I had that wager, and clearly no one else believed at the moment, however I used to be like, yeah, so I’m simply going to begin an organization that helps remedy the developer issues on Solana, as a result of I face them every single day myself, constructing stuff. And so I stop Coinbase and began Helius.”

He roped in Vovk and Pennie, who have been working at TikTok and AWS, respectively. They didn’t know the very first thing about Solana on the time, however they have been fast college students. Though they have been introduced on as engineers, they grew to become equal companions within the enterprise.

To develop Helius additional, he hit the highway to drum up VC funding.

“Principally all of them stated no. It was both ‘Solana is simply too small, that’s not the place the builders are.’ Or ‘I don’t see this as being an enormous enterprise.’”

However once more, his propensity for getting consideration on Twitter got here in helpful. Certainly one of his early viral posts was a grievance about mentally incompetent 80-year-olds working the nation. This caught the attention of a VC who began following him. He reached out whereas he was elevating cash, and the VC launched him to New York-based early-stage crypto VC agency Reciprocal.

“And Reciprocal already had the thesis that Solana would want one thing like this… And they also’re like, ‘yeah, we’ll make investments’ after which I used to be in a position to put a spherical collectively and lift a seed spherical for a Helius.”

Pleasant and relaxed in actual life

Within the hour or so of our interview, Mumtaz comes throughout as a low-key however pleasant man. On X, he appears much more feisty, however he says that’s primarily as a result of folks make a bunch of outrageous claims on-line.

“It actually relies on the stimuli that triggers my response. It simply so occurs that in actual life, folks don’t say blatantly ridiculous stuff as a lot as they do on Twitter. But when I hear that in actual life, I’ll additionally sort of act the identical.”

Regardless of entering into every day conflicts he’s but to have any authorized dramas, or get into any actual bother.

“Possibly one case is like, again within the day, after I known as out that Polygon was paying folks to make use of the chain with all these grants and stuff,” he says. “Then everyone from that ecosystem obtained mad together with all of the founders and stuff.”

He says he’s since made peace with Polygon and “we’re now associates” however provides Helius the corporate has by no means obtained dragged into the drama.

“It’s similar to tremendous violent disagreements from, you understand, different ecosystems, let’s say, however by no means from the corporate. I feel my buyers, once they first invested, they weren’t anticipating me to be like, tweeting the best way I do, and they also have been in all probability a bit nervous.”

“However I’ve truly, surprisingly, by no means obtained in bother.”

Andrew Fenton

Based mostly in Melbourne, Andrew Fenton is a journalist and editor overlaying cryptocurrency and blockchain. He has labored as a nationwide leisure author for Information Corp Australia, on SA Weekend as a movie journalist, and at The Melbourne Weekly.

Comply with the writer @andrewfenton