"Solana AI Hackathon and Token Launches --- Note to Builders and Investors"

The Solana AI Hackathon hosted by SendAI has been underway for some time, but due to the ongoing hype around AI narratives, the community's enthusiasm

Solana AI Hackathon Launches 65 Tokens --- Note to Builders and Investors

[Odaily Planet Daily Translator Azuma / Text]

Solana AI Hackathon, hosted by SendAI, has been underway for some time now, but due to the ongoing hype around AI narratives, the community's enthusiasm for related projects shows no signs of waning.

On-chain analysis research firm Pine Analytics reported yesterday that there are now as many as 65 tokens created or directly associated with projects from this hackathon, with a total market capitalization of $482 million, an average market cap of $7.5 million, and a median market cap of $1.7 million; 13 tokens have a market cap exceeding $10 million, and 42 tokens have a market cap exceeding $1 million.

However, amidst such fervent community sentiment, SendAI founder Yash Agarwal today published a lengthy article criticizing the current hype and chaos—Yash emphasized that the hackathon homepage had only 40,000 visits in the past week, yet any random token could easily reach a market cap of $50 million… SendAI originally intended to build a platform to boost AI development in the Solana ecosystem, but it has now become a "casino for the fallen." In Yash's view, the current bubble will lead developers to become blind and short-sighted, which is detrimental to the long-term development of Solana AI. Therefore, it is necessary to point out some absurd situations; otherwise, the industry will soon witness a "great disaster."

Below is the full text by Yash, translated by Odaily Planet Daily.

When we launched this hackathon, I had a simple vision—to make Solana the AI blockchain and achieve 10x growth.

I believe hackathons are the best feasible way to achieve this goal, as we can gather everyone under one roof, and I can personally invest in promising Crypto x AI Agent projects.

In the past month, I can say that the Solana AI hackathon has not only established its brand but has completely changed the landscape of Solana's AI Agent ecosystem. Completing over 400 projects in 15 days is no easy feat, and my team and I are incredibly proud of our contribution to adding $500 million to $1 billion in market value to the Solana AI ecosystem.

Of course, when we launched this hackathon, we had a premonition that due to this strange Crypto x AI Agent model, there would be some related token issuances. If developers are using tokens as a means of capital accumulation with the goal of building excellent products, that is completely fine. We also carefully designed all 8 tracks (sponsors had no say in this) to encourage truly useful AI Agents.

But we did not expect it to turn into a "casino for the fallen." To give everyone a clearer picture of the numbers, the project homepage of the Solana AI hackathon had only over 40,000 visitors in the past week, yet now 2-3 hackathon-related tokens are easily reaching a market cap of $50 million daily, with the cumulative value of all related tokens exceeding $500 million. Unintentionally, the Solana AI hackathon has become a discovery platform for AI tokens.

Speculation Driven

The current situation is basically as follows:

(Project teams) submit projects in the hackathon and appear in the Solana AI hackathon project directory;

Use the reputation gained from Solana AI hackathon/SendAI;

Release tokens → Attract whale and KOL sniping/promotion → Boom! Instantly complete a token issuance of $5 million to $50 million;

In the eyes of gamblers, through early ape-in operations, they can potentially gain 100x returns from hackathon-related projects, making the hackathon a perfect investment venue.

This is not a new story; it is a typical power-law distribution-driven speculation.

While I am glad to see some developers launching tokens for necessary early capital accumulation, the problem is that the current bubble is too large.

Although this is closer to a fair issuance (similar to ICO), I believe this is not the best direction for us to move forward.

Developers are Becoming Blind

The extremely high pace of token issuance is making developers short-sighted and blind.

Currently, 90% of Crypto x AI projects are no different from meme tokens based on cat/dog concepts. Of course, if they are aware of this, that is completely fine… However, many projects will promote their tokens as "utility tokens," which is actually a bigger scam.

The current pace is detrimental to real developers (especially the weaker ones) in the long term, as they now have to consider short-term issues.

Most Agent/Infra projects have realized that tokens are the best way to gain attention: token issuance → Agent/Framework "viral" spread (but users are 0) → token pump →