What is Solana (SOL)?
Solana is a web-scale blockchain that provides fast, secure, scalable, decentralized apps and marketplaces. The system currently supports 50,000 TPS (Transactions per second) and 400ms Block Times. The overarching goal of the Solana software is to demonstrate that there is a possible set of software algorithms using the combination to create a blockchain. So this would allow transaction throughput to scale proportionally with network bandwidth satisfying all properties of a blockchain: scalability, security and decentralization. Furthermore, the system able to support an upper bound of 710,000 TPS on a standard gigabit network and 28.4 million tps on a 40 gigabit network.
Who Created Solana (SOL)?
Solana was first conceptualized by Anatoly Yakovenko in 2017 who sought a decentralized network of nodes that could match the performance of a single node.
The Solana blockchain is guided by Solana Labs as a core contributor, while also being supported by the Solana Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit dedicated to growing the community and funding development.
Yakovenko and his team began receiving funds in 2018 as part of Solana Labs. The team privately raised over $20 million in a Series A that spanned several months into 2019. After its mainnet launch in March 2020, Solana raised an additional $1.76 million in a public token sale carried out by cryptocurrency auction platform CoinList.
How Does Solana Work?
The Solana network offers many features common to other cryptocurrency networks such as smart contracting, transaction settlement, and token issuance. However, to distinguish itself from others, Solana hopes to offer better settlement speeds and a higher capacity for transactions.
Solana Network Architecture
Solana aims to achieve scalability through it’s network design and operates with eight core components to do so:
- Proof-of-History : Global clock referenced to create a common schedule across all participants
- Gulf Stream : Defines when and how transactions are exchanged
- Sealevel : Processing engine that assigns the order and execution of transactions
- Turbine : Defines how nodes how validate transactions (also known as validators) send and receive blocks
- Cloudbreak : Memory mechanism used to keep track of participant balances
- Pipeline : Verifies each component of a transaction
- Archivers : Network of nodes where data is off-loaded from validators and stored in perpetuity
- While technologically complex and intricate, each component is meant to optimize the amount of transactions Solana can execute without sharding its chain or using a layer two network.
Solana Delegated Proof-of-Stake Consensus
To secure its blockchain, Solana created a consensus mechanism called Tower BFT that incorporates what is commonly referred to as delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS).
DPoS uses a voting and reputation system to secure the network, validate transactions and distribute newly minted SOL, meaning that anyone who owns SOL tokens (sometimes referred to as SOL coins) can help operate the network.
Each SOL token can be locked, or “staked,” by participants (“nodes”) to both participate in governance and to increase the chances of being chosen to produce blocks.
Participants can also choose to delegate their SOL to other validators, allocating votes to them while earning a portion of the block rewards.
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Cryptocurrency