Solana: the ultra-fast next-generation blockchain
Solana is a next-generation open-source blockchain designed to host large-scale decentralized applications.
Its architecture combines speed, security, and censorship-resistance, enabling thousands of transactions per second with minimal fees.
Solana’s standout innovation is Proof of History (PoH), a cryptographic internal clock that, combined with Proof of Stake (PoS), provides a verifiable chronological order of transactions. Thanks to PoH and other innovations, Solana achieves theoretical throughput of 50,000 transactions per second, with blocks validated in under a second.
Unlike some fragmented or layer-2 blockchains, Solana maintains a single global state, simplifying interoperability and project compatibility. Developers can code in C, C++, or Rust, robust and high-performance languages.
🔸 How Solana works
Proof of History: an internal blockchain clock
Proof of History proves that an event occurred before or after another without relying on an external clock.
Imagine a photo confirming that an event happened after a newspaper was published – that’s the idea applied to the blockchain.
Solana applies a looped hash function (SHA256), where each output becomes the next input. This creates a verifiable chronological sequence. Validators group transactions into a block, and other participants reconstruct the order based on the recorded history. This enables high throughput while preserving transaction order.
Parallel execution: Sealevel
Solana can process multiple smart contracts simultaneously via Sealevel, unlike Ethereum where contracts execute sequentially.
Parallel execution reduces congestion and increases the network’s capacity to handle heavy loads.
🔸 Origins and founding team
Solana was founded in 2017 in San Francisco by Anatoly Yakovenko and collaborators, many of whom had worked at Qualcomm.
Yakovenko introduced Proof of History and, together with Greg Fitzgerald and the team, published the white paper and launched the testnet in 2018.
The mainnet and SOL token went live in 2020.
🔸 What makes Solana unique
Beyond PoH, Solana relies on eight key innovations:
- Tower BFT – Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus optimized with PoH
- Pipeline – sequential and optimized transaction processing
- Turbine – block propagation in packets to reduce network latency
- Cloudbreak – horizontally scalable distributed database
- Gulf Stream – transaction forwarding to lighten mempools
- Archivers – decentralized off-chain storage
- Sealevel – parallel smart contract execution
- Proof of History (PoH) – internal cryptographic clock
This combination allows Solana to achieve remarkable performance for a layer-1 blockchain.
🔸 SOL token: fuel of the network
The SOL token is not just a currency; it powers and secures the network.
Main uses:
- Transaction fees – every network interaction uses SOL
- Staking / delegation – holders participate in consensus and earn rewards
- Redistribution / burning – part of fees burned to limit dilution
Supply and inflation
- Current circulation: ≈ 546 million SOL
- No hard cap, but inflation decreases over time (~1.5%)
- Initial supply: 500 million SOL
- Partial fee burning and inflation mechanisms create a dynamic economic model
🔸 Solana today: adoption and outlook
Solana attracts developers and investors due to:
- High throughput and low fees
- Efficient smart contracts and DeFi applications
- NFTs, gaming, and Web3 projects
- Growing community and ecosystem
Despite occasional incidents, Solana stands out for scalability and speed, becoming a key player in the crypto space.
🔸 Summary
Solana is a fast, secure, and innovative blockchain, designed to support large-scale decentralized applications.
Its Proof of History, combined with PoS and other innovations, allows it to combine speed and reliability.
Whether for DeFi, NFTs, or ambitious Web3 projects, Solana offers a powerful network where performance and scalability go hand-in-hand with innovation.