Solana is a blockchain that offers speedy, secure, scalable, decentralized applications (dApps) and marketplaces. It is similar to the cryptotrader.software system, at present, supports up to 50,000 Transactions per Second (TPS) and 400ms Block Times. The all-embracing goal of Solana is to showcase that there is a possible set of software algorithms by using a combination to develop a blockchain. Moreover, the system can support an upper bound of 170,000 Transactions per Second (TPS) on a standard gigabit network and 28.4 million Transactions per Second (TPS) on a 40-gigabit network.
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Understanding Solana
Solana is a public, open-source blockchain that supports smart contracts that include Non-Fungible Token (NFTs) and a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps). The native token of Solana is SOL, which facilitates network security through staking and transferring value.
History of Solana
Solana was developed in the year 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko. Yakovenko used to work at Qualcomm before becoming involved with Solana. He gained a huge range of experience with compression algorithms when he worked at Dropbox as a software engineer. Yakovenko along with Eric Williams, and Greg Fitzgerald developed an entirely new process of dealing with traditional output issues that were observed in the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.
The entire team hoped and worked hard to create a trustless and distributed network that allows and provides better scalability. Solana’s team is fully backed by experience from the best organizations in the world including Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Dropbox, and others.
Solana, since the day it has been officially announced to the public, has created waves among potential investors including Multicoin Capital, Foundation Capital, SLOW Capital, CMCC Global, Abstract Ventures, and more.
Working of Solana
Solana is different from all other blockchains as it uses a combination of consensus mechanisms, Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH). Both of these algorithms compare perfectly with the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism that is used by Ethereum and many other blockchains.
What Proof of Work does is, that it requires computers to compete with each other to solve complex cryptographic puzzles to add blocks and transactions to already existing blockchains. These puzzles are quite complex and involve a huge amount of computer power that results in astronomical amounts of energy loss.
Solana is different as it removes the idea of these puzzles from the beginning. This change has benefitted Solana in various ways and enabled the better performance of Transactions Per Second.
How Is Solana Different From All Other Crypto Assets?
What makes Solana different from all other crypto assets is the way its consensus is formed among the nodes. Though Proof of History has its perks, people have been concerned about its voting system as well as if it causes centralization or not.
In the ecosystem of Solana, nodes must have to vote on the block and their transactions’ authenticity to make them a part of the blockchain. Nodes then send the votes to the leaders and the leader is then made responsible for totaling the votes themselves and signing off the block.
In all blockchains, validators are the ones that are selected through Proof of Stake, they are responsible for creating upcoming blocks of transactions and showcasing them to all other nodes present in the network. The remaining network reviews the new block against their version of the ledger. Then, each node has to check its version of the ledger and the new block against all other nodes present in the protocol. From this point, nodes individually choose their decision to agree or disagree about the new block.
The same process continues until the majority of the nodes agree on one new version of the chain. In this process, no intermediary is used, hence it is time-consuming but a decentralized system is one of the major perks of this new technology.
Where to Purchase Solana?
Solana is a well-recognized cryptocurrency and is available on the following centralized (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX).
CEX
Coinbase
Kraken
FTX
Binance
Crypto.com
BitMax
DEX
Raydium
Orca
Serum
What is the Token Distribution of Solana?
The latest data shows that almost 50 percent of Solana’s initial token allocation went to the insiders such as venture capital firms. Only a small fraction was given to the public.
Bottom Line
Solana is known as the rival of Ethereum. Though it has a long way to go to catch up with the second biggest cryptocurrency Ethereum, it is still well placed to hold a reasonable share of the decentralized applications market.
