Decentralized applications (DApps) have established themselves as one of the most important use cases for blockchain technology.
However, due to the scalability problems presented by blockchains, some DApps have encountered problems developing their activities.
Solana is presented as an alternative to this type of blockchains, such as Ethereum, since it is created to support a large number of transactions without its operation being affected.
Join us during this article where we will see what Solana is, what is its origin, how it differs from other blockchains and how it works.
Fasten your seatbelt, because we're getting started.
What is Solana?
Solana is an open source blockchain project that aims to provide decentralized financial (DeFi) solutions.
It seeks to offer a highly scalable, secure and as decentralized platform as possible.
One of the main features that makes Solana stand out is high-speed transaction processing.
It is known as the fastest layer one blockchain and some call it the “Ethereum killer.”
You may be wondering how this project came to be. Well, follow us to the next point where we will see what its origins were like.
Who created Solana? Who is the creator of Solana? Who created a project that received the nickname “killer” of the second most capitalized project on the market?
The story begins on a beach: Solana, San Diego, United States. Its protagonist: Anatoly Yakovenko
Yakovenko is the creator of Solana, but before that he worked for 13 years for Qualcomm, a company dedicated to the production of software, hardware and wireless technology for smartphones.
Perhaps this last biographical fact seems irrelevant, but here lies the difference between Solana and other blockchains, since Yakovenko imagined a blockchain capable of operating with the same technology that mobile phones operate.
So when was Solana released? It was in November 2017, as shown on his own website, when he launched his idea by publishing the Proof of History white paper.
As you will see, some technicalities begin to appear. Don't worry, we will address them in a way that is easy to understand; Join us to the next point where we will see what distinguishes Solana from other blockchains.
What makes Solana different from other blockchains?
What problem did Solana detect in the blockchains that were working at the time of its launch? Let's see it.
The system for validating blocks can be a bit chaotic on blockchains. Sometimes it happens that two miners or validators generate the same block of transactions at the same time.
When this occurs, in order to continue with transactions, the blockchains are divided while waiting for more blocks to be produced. In the end, the longest blockchain is the winner and the other is abandoned by the miners.
For this reason, sometimes you must wait for several blocks to be confirmed for your transaction to be valid. If your transaction is in a blockchain that was not validated, you will have to wait for it to be incorporated into a new block.
How did Solana solve this? Putting a time stamp on each transaction. Now, the idea of blockchains is that the economy is decentralized. So, it is inevitable to ask, how is a clock decentralized?
Anatoly Yakovenko realized that the Bitcoin algorithm (SHA-256) can function as a decentralized clock, assigning unique and unfakeable time stamps.
At this point, Proof of History technology comes into play. Come with us to the next point where we will continue explaining how Solana differs from other blockchains through its operation.
How does Solana work?
The first thing we must clarify is that Proof of History (PoH) is not a consensus mechanism.
Solana works with a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
This means one thing: validator nodes must stake the native solana SOL token. The greater the amount of SOL token staked, the greater the probability of being chosen as block producers.
Validators within Solana have three functions:
Validate transactions
Archive blocks
Generate new blocks
Now that we know what its consensus mechanism is, let's see how Proof of History works.
How does Proof of History (PoH) work?
Proof of History is the mechanism by which Solana synchronizes its transactions. A timestamp is assigned that prohibits miners from making decisions about the order in which transactions are positioned within the blockchain.
Each transaction will be executed sequentially according to the timestamp.
This allows each validator to organize their blocks without the need to wait for other nodes to check their own.
Because of this, validators have less information to process within each block, reducing their confirmation times.
This is where the biggest differences with Bitcoin and Ethereum arise, since these two add transactions to blocks in no specific order.
The Proof of History mechanism is a solution that saves time and resources to confirm transactions. It is one of the incident factors when considering Solana as the fastest blockchain.
Here appears another of the factors that distinguish Solana from other blockchains: speed. It can carry out approximately 65,000 transactions per second.
It is a striking fact considering that Ethereum can become overloaded if it does so with just 30 transactions.
Let's move on to see what types of projects run within the Solana ecosystem.
What applications run on Solana?
Due to the great processing capacity offered by the network, there are several projects running on Solana. Developers see it as a favorable place to carry out their work.
Among them, we can highlight:
Raydium – is an automated market maker that enables ultra-fast trading, shared liquidity, and yield earning features.
Phantom: is a wallet that allows you to store, send, receive, collect and exchange tokens on the Solana blockchain.
Solanart – is an NFT marketplace that allows anyone to purchase or sell Solana-based NFTs. Its goal is to promote artists by providing a trusted market to share their art.
Now that you know what Solana is and how it works, let's move on to see how its SOL token is used
How is the SOL token used?
There are two main uses of the SOL token in Solana:
Pay commissions on transactions within the blockchain.
Staking.
What is new is that there is no minimum amount of staked tokens to start running as a validator within the network. That is to say, you can be one with just one. But, as we know, the greater the quantity, the greater the chances.
Within the network, a disinflationary policy was proposed, since Solana burns the tokens that are used to pay for transactions.
What determines whether the currency will be inflationary or not is the amount of tokens that are burned compared to those that are produced.
How to buy SOL?
If you are interested in knowing where to buy the SOL token, it is vital that you have a trusted exchange platform.
#binance The best platform.
There is no doubt that Solana is a very interesting project, having as its strengths a high-performance blockchain and a very broad ecosystem of applications.
But what do you think, would you consider investing in it? Do you think it has the potential to be the Ethereum killer?
$SOL $ETH
