Solana pioneer faces lawsuit from ex wife over SOL rewards
Stephen Akridge, a co-founder of Solana, one of the largest blockchain platforms globally, is being sued by his ex-wife, who claims that he secretly made money from her stash of the blockchain's token via staking rewards.
In a lawsuit, Elisa Rossi, Stephen Akridge's ex-wife, accused him of allegedly stealing "millions of dollars" in revenue from her digital wallet containing Solana, the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market value.
Solana co-founder hit with lawsuit over SOL staking rewards
Rossi filed a lawsuit against Akridge on December 24 in San Francisco's Superior Court, claiming her ex-husband had used Solana tokens that she claims are hers to profit "millions of dollars in staking rewards" without her knowledge.
Staking is a strategy to profit from holding specific cryptocurrencies in a wallet. As an incentive to purchase and hold digital assets, users can receive rewards when they stake fiat and cryptocurrencies for a certain period of time.
Staking, in which SOL, the native token of the Solana platform, is locked up and used to validate transactions on the blockchain, enables Solana users to earn more SOL.
According to the complaint, after helping in the founding of Solana Labs in 2018, Akridge served as its principal engineer. He currently serves as the CEO of Cyber Grant, a cybersecurity firm.
In the lawsuit, Rossi claimed that although the couple's March divorce agreement called for them to split ownership of the Solana token they owned, Akridge took advantage of the disparity in knowledge and experience in crypto to stay in control of the SOL and keep earning staking rewards.
According to her complaint, until Ms. Rossi discovered the deception in May 2024, Akridge merely gave Rossi Solana wallet permission over three accounts that held the SOL. This enabled him to secretly continue staking the tokens and earn from it.
Over $25,000 in total sum of SOL tokens involved in legal dispute
Although the complaint redacts the number of SOL tokens at issue and the amount allegedly stolen, it does state that the total is more than $25,000. Additionally, an accompanying filing referred to "the significant sums at issue" in a request to have certain parts of the lawsuit sealed.
According to Rossi's complaint, she texted Akridge "no less than a dozen" times between May and December regarding the allegedly staked rewards that were stolen. In one instance, Akridge allegedly laughed in Ms. Rossi's face and said, "Good luck getting those staking rewards from me," demonstrating his lack of interest in giving her back her staking rewards, according to the lawsuit.
Solana's price dropped since late November
As of the time of writing, SOL is trading at $189.59 and currently down by 2.34% in the last 24 hours after hitting an all-time high of over $257.00 on November 22, according to CoinMarketCap. SOL has risen more than 80% this year to trade at $194, having reached an all-time high of $263 in November. According to Coinbase data from TradingView, SOL was close to $175.00 on December 20.
Disclaimer
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