DeepChain深链
solana  /  key players  /  Capital & institutions
FTX / Alameda

FTX and Alameda: the biggest backer, and the heaviest blow

From 2020 to 2022 FTX and Alameda were Solana's most important funders and promoters. When FTX collapsed in November 2022, SOL lost 90% within two months, Serum was abandoned, and for a while Solana was written off.

FTX bankruptcy case information ↗← Back to key players

How deeply they were tied in

  • Serum: in August 2020 FTX and Alameda backed the launch of Serum, an on-chain order-book exchange. Many early DeFi projects were built on it.
  • Money: Alameda was a big buyer of SOL, and the FTX group also invested in many Solana ecosystem projects.
  • Image: FTX’s founder was one of Solana’s best-known public supporters, and “the FTX camp” was for a while almost a synonym for Solana.

The weeks of the collapse

SOL price, 2022–2024Weekly close · log scale
$10$30$10020232024123
  • Early November 2022: Alameda’s balance sheet leaked, FTX suffered a bank run, and it filed for bankruptcy on 11 November.
  • Price: SOL fell from over $30 at the start of November to the teens within a week, and its daily close hit $9.69 by the end of the year.
  • Serum: FTX held its program upgrade key, and nobody knew where that key would end up. The community quickly forked it into OpenBook, and Serum was abandoned.
  • Ecosystem: many projects funded by the FTX group lost their money, and developers and users left in large numbers.

After the bankruptcy

The FTX estate held a large amount of SOL, much of it still locked. In 2024 the administrators sold big batches of locked SOL to firms including Galaxy and Pantera at prices far below the market, with buyers having to wait for the lock-ups to end before they could sell.

In hindsight, this “fire sale” happened while SOL was recovering, and the buyers did very well; from 2025 FTX began distributing assets to creditors under the bankruptcy process.

The lessons left behind

  • Single-backer risk: an ecosystem that leans too heavily on one institution falls with it.
  • Admin-key risk: Serum’s upgrade key sat with one company, a textbook case of a “decentralised exchange” that was not.
  • It did not die: Solana took two years to recover from the blow, showing the resilience of the chain and its developer community. That is one reason many people are bullish on it again.

Sources

  • Public filings in the FTX bankruptcy case; Serum and OpenBook announcements; prices are DefiLlama weekly closes.
  • This page is an educational summary and is not investment advice.