Stephen Akridge, co-founder of Solana, is currently entangled in a legal battle with his former wife, Elisa Rossi, over alleged misappropriation of staking rewards from SOL tokens.

Rossi, an Italian citizen who now lives in Rome, was married to Akridge for almost 10 years. The couple has amassed a tremendous amount of wealth and assets during their marriage, mainly due to Akridge's role in the founding of Solana Labs, the company that created the Solana blockchain.

In 2023, the couple filed for divorce, according to state court records. According to Rossi, the divorce was acrimonious and prolonged.

Akridge's nifty little plan

Following the divorce, Rossi was entitled to portion of the couple's SOL tokens. The cryptocurrency is now booming with a market value of $90 billion, according to coinGekco.

According to Rossi's accounts, Akridge used his superior knowledge in cryptocurrency to devise a nifty little trick-which is to portion part of the Solona tokens that they have together to his wife, but craftily keeping all the additional gains that he generated from staking for himself, thinking that his wife wouldn't find out.

Staking, a common process in blockchain networks, involves pledging cryptocurrency holdings to validate transactions and earn additional tokens as rewards. Rossi alleges that Akridge took advantage of her limited understanding of the staking process to misappropriate these earnings for his own benefit.

While the exact value of the disputed funds has been redacted from the court documents, but Rossi claims that the staking rewards go up to millions of dollars, and Akridge bypassed his wife and used her digital wallet for staking without her consent.

Rossi has also requested for portion of the case to remain confidential due to the sensitive financial details.

After finding out that her husband has been withholding a portion of the staking rewards from her, she has reached out to Akridge more than a dozen times between May and December to ask for a quiet settlement.

According to Rossi, her request was meant with harsh ridicule from Akridge, who at one point even laughed at her face. Rossi is seeking damages for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraud.

The rise of the Solana empire

This lawsuit comes as Solana regains prominence as one of the top-performing cryptocurrencies. Despite its association with Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research during the FTX collapse, which drove SOL’s value below $10, the cryptocurrency has staged a strong recovery, cementing its position as the leading cryptocurrency in the digital market.

In December, Solana achieved over $100 billion in decentralized exchange trading (DEX) volume for the second consecutive month in December.

With a $107.865 billion in monthly DEX volume, solana outpaced its competitors in December, including Biannce Smart Chain and Ethereum, which recorded $91,444 billion and $84.168 billion.

It was also reported that Solana has overtaken Ethereum as the top destination for new developers in 2024, breaking Ethereum's eight-year dominance in the space.

Natably, Solana also outpaced its competitor Ethereum in two other instances this year. On March 18, Solana's network activity exceeded Ethereum's due to heightened demand for Solana-based meme coins.

Later, on October 28, Solana's daily network fee generation surpassed Ethereum's for a 24-hour period. In another incident earlier this month, prominent blockchain researcher Max Resnick announced that he has shifted from Ethereum infrastructure firm ConsenSys to SOL-focused R&D company Anza.

Resnick previously led research at ConsenSys' Special Mechanisms Group, where he voiced support for alternative scaling models.

Lawsuit likely to have no impact Solana?

With this case gaining massive attention from the crypto community, some would ask "would this lawsuit affect the performance of Solana?"

My personal take is no, because this is a personal matter and it would most likely not affect or change a person's decision to either buy or not buy Solana.

But what this saga has taught us is that everybody should have at least a decent understanding of cryptocurrency and its functioning, considering its wide adoption and usage. Akridge and Rossi is not the first spouses who have faced similar crypto asset distribution issues due to unawareness.

But most importantly, crypto scams have already disturbed our lives today, with the most recent being Pudgy Penguin's phishing scams targeting NFT holders. Thus, it is very important for us to equip ourselves with at least a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies for us to deter against all these pertinent traps.