Who is Raj Gokal? Migos' Instagram hacked in a reported attempt to blackmail Solana co-founder

Rap group Migos' official Instagram account was recently hacked in a reported endeavour to blackmail Raj Gokal, the president of Solana Labs. For the unversed, Raj Gokal co-founded Solana Labs with Anatoly Yakovenko in 2017. According to the company's LinkedIn page, Solana Labs, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, "builds products, tools and reference implementations that can be used on the Solana blockchain."

On May 26, 2025, the official Instagram account for Migos, the former rap group consisting of Offset, Quavo, and the late rapper Takeoff, posted several pictures of Raj Gokal and his private documents, including non-redacted photos of his passport and driver's license. There were supposed images of Gokal's wife holding up a driver's license and documents with visible contact information.

According to Coin Telegraph, the pictures, which have since been deleted, were a reported attempt to extort Gokal of 40 bitcoins. The uploaded photos were captioned, “you should’ve paid the 40 btc," or “it was only 40 btc.. should’ve paid."

Rapper Quavo has also acknowledged the hack in his Instagram Story, writing:

"@migos Our Ig is hacked will be back up shortly thanks."

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Raj Gokal previously mentioned facing hacking attempts before the Migos incident

Ahead of the Migos hack that divulged his personal information in a blackmail attempt, Raj Gokal had previously mentioned fending off attackers trying to hack his social media, Google, and Apple accounts. On May 20, 2025, Gokal took to X to warn people to be wary of hackers, writing:

"Attackers have been trying to take control of my email, social media, Google, Apple, etc. this past week. If you see anything suspect (token launch, soliciting funds, etc) that means they got through. Be careful out there."

raj

@rajgokal

Attackers have been trying to take control of my email, social media, Google, Apple, etc. this past week. If you see anything suspect (token launch, soliciting funds, etc) that means they got through.

be careful out there

For the unversed, Raj Gokal graduated with a degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gokal worked in multiple industries, such as healthcare and wearables, before starting Solana Labs in 2017.

He worked as an associate at General Catalyst Partners before co-founding Sano, a health and fitness company, in 2011. According to its LinkedIn page, the company created a "biometric sensor patch and mobile app" to "enable the painless detection of chemical metabolic data," including glucose sensing.

Raj Gokal left Sano in 2013 and continued working in the health industry as the Entrepreneur in Residence at Rock Health and Director of Product at Omada Health. In December 2017, he co-founded Solana Labs with his partner Anatoly Yakovenko. He is also a board member of the Solana Foundation, a non-profit located in Switzerland.

In a November 2024 interview on the YouTube channel Silicon Valley Girl, Raj Gokal explained how he and Yakovenko met, saying:

"The idea came entirely from Anatoly (Yakovenko). He had been focusing on the scalability of distributed systems, and we met at Omada. At the time, I was working closely with a former particle physicist, Eric Williams, who was in charge of data science and I was in charge of product management. Later, he told me that Anatoly was working on the scalability problem of blockchain and was very passionate about this direction. He suggested that I meet Anatoly."

Not much is known about Raj Gokal's personal life.

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At the time of writing this article, Raj Gokal has not publicly commented on the recent attempted blackmail or the Migos hack revealing his personal information. The hacked information was reportedly visible on the Migos account for over 90 minutes before the pictures were deleted.