According to a Bloomberg News report on Dec. 27, Stephen Akridge, a co-founder of Solana, is being sued by his ex-wife, Elisa Rossi, for allegedly siphoning off significant proceeds from Solana tokens. Although not specifying the amount, it is reportedly claimed by Stephen Akridge’s ex-wife to be “millions of dollars.”
Rossi claims that Akridge had utilized extensive knowledge in crypto and blockchain to divert her staking rewards from her digital wallet. The complaint said Akridge’s actions made Rossi lose “millions of dollars” in income. She further declared that Akridge managed her accounts from early March to mid-May and reaped 100% of the staking commissions allocated to her SOL holdings, while the amount of value of the disputed tokens was not spelled out. Rossi described the figures as “significant” and requested a partial filing of the complaint under seal Solana Labs, along with counsel for Akridge and Rossi, declined to comment.
Akridge was a principal engineer with Solana and among key developers of the blockchain with the company’s co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. Before at Solana, he worked for Qualcomm Inc. Currently the CEO of Cyber Grant- a California-based cybersecurity company.
They both went separate ways and filed for a divorce in February 2023 after a decade of being married. Rossi’s suit alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraud, seeking damages for financial losses she claims to have incurred.
Solana sees an increase in liquid staking adoption.
Growth of Liquid staking on Solana If data from different platforms is anything to go by, then staking SOL tokens has an APY that lies in the range of 5.6% to 12% annually. But through liquid staking platforms, users ramp up their yields, data on Jito would indicate, considering the total value locked into the protocol. The latter sets the largest by that metric on Solana, at close to $2.7 billion per DefiLlama data. The liquid staking market accounts for roughly 50% of Solana’s entire TVL. Liquid staking gives users a proxy token of similar value to the amount involved in staking, with the APY coming as an extra from the respective platform. This means any new token created can henceforth be used on most DeFi protocols to help increase rewards.