Facts about Solana (SOL)

Solana's history

Solana is a blockchain platform launched by a Swiss foundation of the same name. Solana's creators aimed to achieve the highest performance without sacrificing decentralization or increasing costs. The SOL cryptocurrency appeared in the listings on exchanges in April 2020 with an initial price of $0.9511. Experts appreciated the innovative technological foundation, impressive transaction speed, and scalability potential, so the cost of the new cryptocurrency quickly skyrocketed, reaching the $260 mark by the end of 2021.

In 2022, Solana's network experienced repeated failures, an unacceptable scenario for a working blockchain with millions of users and billions of dollars in capital. As a result, the coin halved in price and was trading at $10 by the end of 2022. The glitches were repeated in February 2023 and again a year later. However, despite these problems, in 2024, Solana regained its position and secured itself in the top five cryptocurrencies with the best capitalization. Currently, the coin holds a price of $147.

Solana network problems

At the moment, the main problem for users looking to buy Solana is that the blockchain processes billions of transactions every month. The transaction rate on the Solana network is an impressive 850 transactions per second. After seeing such high rates, it's unlikely that anyone will say what the problem with the Solana blockchain is — or that there is a problem at all.

The problem is that 75% of these transactions are performed incorrectly: only the "gas" — the network transaction fee — is paid, but nothing else happens. This happens when the specified transaction conditions are not met: for example, the coin is sold out or its price "slips" beyond the set limit. However, real users encounter this scenario quite rarely.

Most of the failed transactions fall on arbitrage bots: the commissions for buying Solana are so low that it is profitable for bots to spam the blockchain with thousands of requests and lose hundreds of dollars on failed transactions. If, or rather when, the transaction is successful, they can earn hundreds of thousands.

Another problem — which, by the way, real users face — is the complete cancellation of a transaction. The point is that Solana has been switched to the QUIC network protocol to combat the overloading of the blockchain with requests from bots, and this update sometimes produces errors at the messaging level. However, it should be remembered here that Solana is technically still in beta testing. The developers are still improving the platform and getting rid of bugs.

Facts about Solana

As with any investment in the cryptocurrency market, the user will have to weigh many pros and cons before buying Solana. Here are some facts to analyze:

1. The biggest advantage of Solana is its transaction speed. This is achieved through the simplicity of verification by Proof-of-History (PoH) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithms. This simplicity also makes the platform profitable for users: Solana charges less than 2 cents per transaction.
2. Many cryptocurrency platforms have a negative impact on the environment, as they require huge amounts of energy to operate. With the same ease of verification, Solana's platform consumes only 658 joules per transaction — less than a Google search, for example.
3. Solana is outperforming many blockchains in terms of transaction speeds and the benefits of fees, and it is also gaining a share of the NFT market. The growing demand for NFT could bring Solana success in the long run.
4. Solana is a young and, therefore, less stable network. For many investors, reliability is a more critical factor than, say, low transaction fees.
5. Solana does not have a fixed number of coins, which means the cryptocurrency is subject to inflation.

Any operations on the cryptocurrency market are associated with risks. You should assess your capabilities, analyze the situation, read expert materials, and keep the risks in your comfort zone. If it is necessary to buy Solana, BestChange will provide a list of exchangers so that users can choose the one that meets all the requirements.