Stumbled upon a wild throwback—a 2018 pitch deck presentation from Solana's co-founder at some former Google employees meetup. Here's the crazy part: back then, Solana hadn't even launched on testnet yet. The whole operation was basically running through a Telegram group chat.

What really struck me was watching him blaze through those slides. The pace was insane, almost like he was racing against time itself. But you could tell—he already had the entire vision mapped out in his head. Every technical detail, every scaling solution, the whole architecture. It wasn't just a pitch; it felt like watching someone describe a future they'd already lived through.

Seven years later, looking at where the network stands now, that clarity hits different. Sometimes you can just sense when founders truly get what they're building.