Solana has been touted as the “next big thing”, and for good reasons. But what is Solana, and how does it work?
Since there has been an issue of scalability with blockchains, Solana aims to tackle this issue
The blockchain technology was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko in 2017 from the Solana labs.
As of the time of writing, blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum and others suffer from scalability and speed issues.
It aims to tackle this issue by using a method known as Proof Of History (PoH). What this means is that the blockchain can handle thousands of transactions per second.
Therefore, a third generation Proof of Stake blockchain, Solana has implemented a unique way of creating trustless systems that determines the time of transactions. They call this Proof of History.
What Are The Features Of Solana?
Solana has 8 core features to help it match capabilities of a centralised system. Aside Proof of History, they have the following:
– Archives – distributed ledger storage.
– Gulf Stream: Mempool-Less transaction forwarding protocol.
– Turbine – block propagation protocol.
– Sealevel – parallel smart contracts run time.
– Cloudbreak – horizontally scaled accounts database.
– Tower BFT – a PoH optimized of practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance.
– Pipelining – a transaction processing unit for validation optimization.
These features allows for thousands of transactions per second. This is huge when you compare it to Bitcoin which has a block time of 15 minutes, and Ethereum with 15 seconds.
As of time of writing, the blockchain has almost 1,000 validators, which makes it quite decentralized. Validators process transactions on the blockchain.
All $SOL holders can stake their tokens with a compatible wallet can stake their tokens with these validators who process transactions.
Unlike Bitcoin that is based on a proof of work system, the blockchain is based on a proof of history, You can learn more about Solana’s Proof of History here
