What is Solana (SOL)?

Blockchain technology — being the hot cake in the world of Fintech has given rise to a lot of startups to take up its trend. Due to its liberating features, many innovations have been born via this concept; it has revolutionized the whole idea of money.

DeFi — the golden child of blockchain technology, is redefining the crypto space. Lately, there has been so much emphasis on DeFi as it incorporates the whole idea of traditional money, like lending and borrowing, earning interest, and so on, into Blockchain technology.

These Decentralized Blockchain platforms have been bringing a whole new Boogaloo to the dancehall of tech, and this is precisely what Solana is trying to do. What is Solana, and how is it changing the entire game? Grab a cup of coffee and read through.

What is Solana (SOL)?

In simple words, Solana is a reliable open-source Blockchain technology platform that features several decentralized solutions. Solana is unique from other platforms in functionality, capacity-on-demand, etc. the net is combining a proof-of-history model with the regular proof-of-stake model of the blockchain.

Solana currently offers new blocks, every 400 milliseconds using 924 validating nodes and supporting 55,000 transactions per second (tps), making it the fastest Blockchain tech globally — with a $0.00025 average cost per transaction.

Taking a glimpse at its background:

Anatoly Yakovenko founded the Solana (SOL) blockchain in 2017. Gathering work experience in algorithms and software engineering from Qualcomm and Dropbox, He formed a team with Eric Williams and Greg Fitzgerald. And they developed a platform that employs Proof of history to solve the common shortcomings in the latter blockchain technology.

As mentioned earlier, several ends of Solana puzzle out the common issues paramount to the previous generations of blockchain tech, like functionality in the Blockchain scope. Solana uses an efficient performance protocol and trade processing mechanism. They are known for high transaction speed, and this has attracted some global companies like SLOW capital, CMCC Global, etc., to sponsor and partner with them.

Solana Features

Typically, Solana has eight different innate features that differentiate it from several platforms out there. Here, let's look at them.

- Proof of History: PoH is viewed as Solana’s trademark, and it is a recent feature in the blockchain tract. PoH can be regarded as a cryptographic clock in Solana's Blockchain that keeps all data and crucial info in an open ledger in an orderly manner. PoH is a bit different from Proof of stake and Proof of work; PoH aids the longevity of the whole network and facilitates trades swiftness.

- Tower BFT: is Solana's PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) version. This feature is a set of rules that uses a cryptographic clock by bypassing many node functions.

- Turbine: is a block transmission protocol that helps to translate data to the nodes. Here the data is fragmented into pieces. This improves Solana's bandwidth and enhances the system’s speed.

- Gulfstream: this feature enhances the whole method of transition. It decreases approval time, switches PoH generators fast, and minimizes the pressure in the memory.

- Sea-level: This works as the system's CPU by enabling lots of smart contracts to run with one another equivalently. Also, it allows a more resourceful runtime for Solana.

- Pipelining: is the transaction processing unit of the system. It focuses on the hardware parts and ensures they work effectively.

- Cloudbreak: a data arrangement that facilitates optimization for simultaneous reads and writes spreads through all grids and ensures configuration of Solid-state storage.

- Archivers: this breaks the history of hash states' into pieces and erasures coded. Here, Records on Solana are transferred from validators to nodes net.

Solana Blockchain

Solana’s whole network is skyrocketing, as a lot of start-ups are engaging this platform. Solana Ecosystem features an efficient and secure system that offers an open setup for global adoption. This system can process about 55,000 tps (transactions per second) and 400ms block times with Solana coins.

Presently, over 300 blockchain projects are running on Solana’s network. Several DeFi platforms have been launched via this Solana. The ecosystem provides block explorer, Community, DApps, DeFi, and stake distribution to view several network stake statistics across the Solana blockchain.

Solana facilitates many projects like Raydium, Serum, Bonfida, Orca, Mango Markets, Phantom Wallet, oxygen, and a lot more. Many of these schemes developed on the Solana platform inherit features like speed, reliability, and lots of them are tied to Solana's development.

Where to Buy Solana Coin? 

Solana offers transactions of the SOL coin and digital assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Just as Ether is to Ethereum, SOL is the innate coin of the network. It's used to transact and stake on the blockchain. Currently, $SOL is trading at $140 with over $40 billion market cap and above 400 million in circulation.

With a market cap of 40billion+, Sol is ranked 7th and recently just rose above Dogecoin.

How Does Solana Work?

Solana is an effective blockchain; with a net of 600 confirmatory nodes that produce 50,000 Tps. Sol has a distinct architecture which has made it unique.

As stated earlier, Solana works by merging the Proof of Stake model with its inherent feature Proof of History.

Proof of history records all information accordingly. Relating it to an Olympic 100m race, each athlete gets compensated when they cross the finish line. This is precisely how PoH works. Each transaction gets recorded with a timestamp, and they get sorted out in that order. This is the exact opposite of what PoW used in Cardano and other platforms does. Proof of Work prioritizes significant transactions.

Integrating PoS with PoH fastens the order and confirmation of transactions. Also, with other keys features of Solana discussed above, nodes validate transactions faster. With its Gulfstream feature, less energy is consumed because it breaks transaction approval into several nodes.

Conclusion

The whole DeFi network is exploding, and Solana is undoubtedly a lit project rocking the crypto space. Due to its genius delivery, many developers are switching to this network.