Everything about Solana (SOL)
Solana is a relatively new blockchain, created in 2020 to provide one of the most scalable, efficient, and sustainable crypto networks in the world. It proved pretty successful in this task, quickly becoming one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and attracting millions of users.
Its whole idea is that it provides tons of various solutions and mechanisms to make your work on the blockchain more convenient. Many of these features complement each other well, creating a very user-friendly and well-woven-together infrastructure. It includes several unique features not found anywhere else in the decentralized world.
History
Solana was launched in 2020, although the development started back in 2017. At that point, the crypto world was still pretty new. The existing solutions were comfortable enough, but there were enough cracks in the biggest blockchains that people really wanted to be fixed.
These included low transaction speeds, high fees, scalability issues, general inflexibility, and the inability to effectively move one’s assets from one network to the other. All of that made it more difficult for people to use cryptocurrencies and especially to develop their projects.
Solana was created as a solution to many of these problems, although it didn’t catch on immediately. Instead, it entered the public eye in March 2021 and became widely popular by November. It was during this craze that it became the well-known project it is today, although the price later fell to a more moderate level and stayed there.
Main eatures of Solana
Proof-of-History
Proof-of-history is a unique consensus mechanism utilized on Solana to complement the proof-of-stake method it uses to create blocks. It’s a combinatory approach with a lot of advantages, although the PoS system is still the more prominent of the two. PoH simply helps it deliver results.
This mechanism essentially creates timestamps when something of note happens in the system. The result is that there’s always a validated, verified catalog of actions that happened historically on the blockchain. All this information is then used to help nodes corroborate their conclusions. This saves time and effort, making a lot of things on Solana happen much faster than on other PoS networks.
In the end, it helps reduce the costs of each transaction, speed them up and, vitally, make the process more sustainable energetically.
Horizontal scalability
One of the main focuses of this network is the issue of scalability. The PoH mechanism already helps with that, making everything on Solana run faster and in a more cost-effective manner than it otherwise would. There is another feature that helps with it, called ‘sharding’.
Sharding is a type of horizontal scalability, a kind of scalability achieved by increasing the computing power not through building atop the existing processing units but by adding more processing units. On Solana, it’s achieved by breaking the blockchain up into many shards, each of which can process data in parallel.
So, if one shard is congested, the flow will go through the other one. If that one is filled up, the extra flow will be redirected to the third one, and so forth. It’s a more practical approach, meaning that all available processing power is engaged in a gradual manner. It’s also easy to add new shards, if need be.
The result is a more effective scaling model, which allows you to run more and more data through your system without having to build giant processing units and expanding them continuously.
Smart contracts
Solana uses smart contracts, like any self-respecting modern blockchain. There’s really no reason not to implement them into the infrastructure, seeing how they improve everything they touch. They allow to automate every process and action and create complex sequences that enable the development of decentralized apps, for instance.
Before Ethereum, which introduced smart contracts, dApps and similar products were really common.
They were around, but they were difficult to create because there wasn’t a tool that could make everything run autonomously like smart contracts do. They basically make sure that a certain action is performed when the necessary requirements are met, and one can do a lot with that.
They run on gas, usually, which refers to a small quantity of Ethereum that basically fuels the operations of a smart contract. On Solana, the local token called SOL is typically used to fund such operations. It’s a lot more cost-effective than what Ethereum offers.
The credit, once more, goes to the combination of proof-of-history and proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. Thanks to their focus on saving time and sustainability, you can pay a lot less for smart contracts on Solana than you would on Ethereum.
Interoperability
In addition to the increased comfort on Solana itself, the system also has several gateways and bridges that allow for seamless transition of assets from other blockchains, provided these networks are compatible enough with Solana. It means that you can maintain multi-chain projects on multiple blockchains like Ethereum, TRON and Solana without much extra effort.
It’s very easy and drives scalability even further, although on a different level. In addition to increasing your output on Solana itself, individuals can now spread it to other networks that are similar in principle and structure. This allows to enhance one’s performance even more and benefit from good features in other systems.
Summary
The Solana blockchain is a blend of scalability and increased efficiency. There are several unique features that make sure one can expand their operations without any unnecessary obstacles and with extreme precision. In addition, it’s extremely comfortable for developers and regular users alike.
