Solana

Solana is currently the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, but considering that it started the year 2021 trading at almost €2 and is now almost €128.

Solana is considered by many analysts to be Ethereum’s biggest competitor as its blockchain technology has the ability to process between 50,000 to 65,000 transactions per second, compared to just 15 to 30 transactions per second for Ethereum, or 250 for Cardano.

Solana was proposed in a white paper Anatoly Yakovenko published in November of 2017. This paper described a technique called “proof of history”.[non-primary source needed]

On 16 March 2020, Solana’s first block was created.

In September 2021, Bloomberg journalist Joanna Ossinger described Solana as “a potential long-term rival for Ethereum”, citing superior transaction speeds and lower associated costs.

On 14 September 2021, the Solana blockchain went offline after a surge of transactions caused the network to fork, and different validators had different views on the state of the network. The network was brought back online the next day on 15 September 2021.

On 16 December 2021, the former First Lady of the United States Melania Trump announced her plans to use Solana to launch a non-fungible token (NFT). The Solana Foundation issued a press release to clarify that her choice of the platform was not officially “part of any Solana-led initiative.”

The Solana blockchain again went offline on May 1st, 2022 and May 31st, 2022. The outage at the beginning of the month lasted roughly seven hours, and the one at the end of the month lasted about four and a half hours.

The Nasdaq 100 ended the week with nearly 4.5% weekly gains. Of late, top cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have formed a higher correlation with tech stocks and indices.

Design

Solana achieves consensus using a proof-of-stake mechanism and a “proof-of-history” mechanism.

Solana’s consensus algorithm is a hybrid of proof-of-stake (PoS) and “proof-of-history” (PoH). Under this algorithm, blockchain validators stake SOL tokens to secure the network. They are then rewarded for their participation in proportion to the amount of SOL they have staked.

To ensure that all transactions on the Solana network are processed in a timely and efficient manner, the PoH mechanism is used to verify the order of transactions. This is done by hashing each transaction and then comparing it to a similar hash value stored in a decentralized data structure called a Sparse Merkle Tree. If the two hash values match, then the transaction is considered to be valid.

Like various other blockchains, Solana can run smart contracts. Solana’s execution environment is based on eBPF, which allows the Rust, C, and C++ programming languages to be used.

With the help of the PoH mechanism, Solana is able to process more than 50,000 transactions per second. This is made possible by the fact that only a small number of validators are needed to verify each transaction.

The use of eBPF as Solana’s execution environment makes it possible for the network to support a wide range of smart contracts. eBPF is a versatile instruction set that can be used to create all kinds of applications.

In addition to supporting smart contracts, Solana also offers a decentralized exchange called Serum. Serum is an off-chain solution that uses the Solana network to settle trades. This allows for near-instantaneous trading of digital assets without having to wait.