Helius Labs CEO defends Solana against critics after Libra crash causes scam accusations

Solana is one of the most controversial and embattled chains in crypto, but one of the reasons it continues to thrive despite all the obstacles is its cult-like community. 

Mert Mumtaz, the Helius Lab CEO is a hardcore member of that community with the battle scars to show for it. He proved his love for the chain again earlier today when he rose to Solana’s defense following the disaster of the Libra meme token which reportedly allowed $4.4B to be extracted from the ecosystem by grifters. 

Mert has words for those tagging Solana as a haven of scams 

Mert was not having the negativity triggered by the Libra token rugpull on Solana and took to X, formerly Twitter, to share his opinions. 

As far as Mert is concerned, many of those complaining about scams on Solana are maxis from a chain that has significantly less activity than Solana. In one post, he attributed all the noise to “cope” which he called “the most addictive drug.” 

you are not upset that there are scams on Solana

you are upset that your chain has no activity

"New York City has more crime than my farm in Alabama" is not a dunk

— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) February 15, 2025

“Crypto’s history is almost all speculation — L1 coins, ICOs, NFTs, L2 coins, and now memecoins,” he wrote. “The function is the same, the form is different, it is raw brainworms to think “the validator client that is named Solana is encouraging scams.” 

Mert said all Solana does is make “assets fast and cheap to move,” and reminded everyone that “every ecosystem has shitcoins and has always had immense speculation.” 

Mert urged those who have a problem with Solana to channel their energy into building an alternative instead of resorting to “endless moral posturing to hate-farm some dopamine hits from pessimists.” 

He also mocked Ethereum maxis, many of whom have used the Libra rug to call out Solana as a rug chain, for often glazing their chain’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, who recently agreed that the L1 he created needs higher gas limits. 

Of course, Mert’s defense did not go without responses from trolls, which only seemed to piss him off more. At some point, he shared a post that saw him reveal he was asked why he was “enabling scams” even though, according to him, he never shills tokens despite numerous daily temptations and only focuses on “scaling the tech, shitposting, and helping startups/institutions adopt crypto.”

Notably, Bitcoin and USDT on the Tron blockchain have faced the same accusations as Mert Mumtaz and Solana in the past, with detractors implicating the projects for the nature of users’ activities.

What happened to the Libra token?

The Libra meme was a token that Argentina’s president Javier Milei had initially promoted in a now-deleted post on X. It was linked to the Viva La Libertad Project, which claimed to have plans to support Argentina’s economy by funding small businesses. 

The president took down his tweets after allegedly learning more details and confessed that he had failed to conduct proper due diligence before endorsing the project. 

“I initially supported a supposed private enterprise with which I have no connection. After becoming aware of the details, I decided to discontinue spreading the word,” he said. 

The announcement caused panic among holders who had rushed in to buy Libra, pushing its market capitalization to $4.5 billion after Milei’s initial endorsement. 

As doubts about the project’s legitimacy spread, the token’s price tumbled from $4.50 to $0.50, and trading volume hit $1.1 billion in just a few hours before the sell-off intensified.

On-chain analysis immediately turned up a red flag as blockchain data revealed that 82% of Libra’s total supply was spread among a few wallets. 

According to on-chain analytics firm Bubblemaps, the project’s developers sped up the demise of the token because they withdrew $87 million from liquidity pools. Chainalysis also pointed out that the address that created the Libra token and the one holding a major portion of its supply, seemed to be controlled by a single private key, rather than a multi-signature setup, the more secure option. 

The Libra token rug was only successful thanks to the participation of Milei, who endorsed it without doing enough research. However, this is not the first time Milei has gotten involved with a crypto scam. 

In 2021, he endorsed CoinX, which promised big returns through AI-powered trading but was revealed to be an alleged Ponzi scheme. Milei later faced litigation for losses between 30 and 40 million Pesos ($300,000) after regulators shut down CoinX.

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