Solana co-founder Stephen Akridge has been sued by his ex-wife, who has accused him of secretly profiting from her stash of the blockchain’s token through staking rewards.
Akridge was hit with a lawsuit filed in San Francisco’s Superior Court on Dec. 24 by Elisa Rossi, who alleged her ex-husband earned “millions of dollars in staking rewards” from Solana SOL
$191.31 tokens she claims are hers — without her knowledge.
The complaint said Akridge was Solana Labs’ principal engineer after helping establish the company in 2018. He is now CEO of the cybersecurity company Cyber Grant.
Rossi’s suit said the pair’s March divorce agreement would split ownership of SOL they owned, but Rossi alleged Akridge “took advantage of the significant disparity in expertise in cryptocurrencies” to keep control of the tokens and continue earning staking rewards from them.
Her complaint alleged Akridge “merely gave Ms. Rossi’s Solana wallet authority over three accounts that contained the Solana tokens,” which allowed him “to secretly continue staking Ms. Rossi’s Solana tokens and earning millions of dollars in staking rewards until Ms. Rossi discovered the deception in May 2024.”
The number of SOL tokens at issue and the sum allegedly stolen are redacted in the complaint, but it does mention the sum is over $25,000, and an accompanying filing mentioned “the significant sums at issue” in a request to seal parts of the lawsuit.
SOL hit an all-time peak of $263 last month and has still gained over 80% this year to trade at $194, as Solana has played host to a number of 2024’s popular crypto trends — namely memecoins.
Solana users can earn additional SOL through staking, where SOL is locked up, used to validate the blockchain’s transactions and are given SOL as a reward.
In her complaint, Rossi claimed that between May and December, she sent “no less than a dozen” text messages to Akridge about the allegedly stolen staking rewards.
The suit claimed Akridge “made clear he had no interest in returning Ms. Rossi’s staking rewards to her, at one point laughing in her face and saying, ‘good luck getting those staking rewards from me.’”
Akridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via LinkedIn. Cyber Grant was contacted for comment. Information on Akridge’s lawyers was not available at the time of writing.
