We study the question of whether the famous Golod-Shafarevich estimate, which gives a lower bound for the Hilbert series of a (non-commutative) algebra, is attained. This question was considered by Anick in his 1983 paper, ‘Generic algebras and CW-complexes’ (Princeton University Press), where he proved that the estimate is attained for the number of quadratic relations d ≤ ¼n2 and d ≥ ½n2, and conjectured that it is the case for any number of quadratic relations. The particular point where the number of relations is equal to ½n(n – 1) was addressed by Vershik. He conjectured that a generic algebra with this number of relations is finite dimensional.

We prove that over any infinite field, the Anick conjecture holds for d ≥ (n2 + n) and an arbitrary number of generators n, and confirm the Vershik conjecture over any field of characteristic 0. We give also a series of related asymptotic results.