Is Solana leaving the competition in the dust?

This high-speed blockchain is the fastest in the world, and it's not stopping there. Solana's solution for scale is also low cost and censorship resistant. 

The growing network continues to gain momentum.

Here’s a recap on the Solana project to bring you up to speed.

Solana was founded in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko. The former Qualcomm engineer sought to solve the challenges other blockchains faced with growth and speed.

His solution? Time.

Time isn't so straightforward for blockchains. In fact, agreeing on time is one of the biggest challenges distributed networks face. That is because nodes cannot trust a "standardized clock" or timestamp on a transaction.

Well, not until now. 
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Solana makes it possible to agree on the time and sequence of transactions with its Proof of History (PoH) protocol. The consensus requires validators to continuously solve high frequency Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF). Without getting technical, a VDF is a fancy sequential computation to establish a trustless source of time.

The network’s core innovations and PoH algorithm are fuel for its impressive processing speed. Solana boasts processing 400 millisecond block times and theoretically, up to 710,000 transactions per second. While the blockchain's explorer shows an actual TPS of around 2,600, its speed is still much faster than rival chains like Ethereum at 13 TPS and Bitcoin at less than 5 TPS.

The lightning-fast blockchain is taking the world by storm.

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Solana raised roughly $25 million between 2017 - 2020 and a further $340 million in 2021. Bank of America even compared the coin's potential to be the "Visa of the digital asset ecosystem.”   

The institutions seem to be betting big on Solana. But is their interest overshadowing actual network issues?  

Solana suffered notable outages at the end of 2021 and into the new year. From multiple DDoS attacks and performance issues to a full-blown Wormhole Bridge hack, some began to question the network's stability. 

Nevertheless, the investor's approval kept concerns at bay. After all, Solana seems to have the funds to support any necessary development.

Solana’s native token SOL has two primary uses; staking and paying the low transaction fees.

SOL currently ranks #6 by market cap at $33.1 billion. Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko also show the 24hour trading volume topping over $1 billion. It's safe to say this digital asset has gained some serious market interest. 

The rapidly growing ecosystem is already home to over 1,500 projects. Its speed and low fees are ideal for DeFi, Web3, Gaming, and NFTs. One of the most notable integrations of late includes Solana's partnership with OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace.  

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The world’s fastest blockchain has many other projects in its pipeline, including one with Neon for a smart contracts layer. Solana also continues to gain support from the USDC stablecoin, Circle.  The network remains focused on driving adoption by expanding its global footprint and increasing the number of validators. 

Solana’s Mainnet launched in March 2020, yet its blockchain still notes Beta. This goes without much concern as it’s likely to ensure network stability in the long run. 

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For now, Solana is surely proving itself as a force to be reckoned with in crypto.

Will that hold true for the future? We shall wait and see.

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