Solana (SOL)

Solana is a high-performance blockchain platform launched in 2020, designed for speed, scalability, and low transaction costs. It was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former Qualcomm engineer.

Solana can process thousands of transactions per second with sub-second finality and fees that are fractions of a cent. This performance has made it popular for DeFi, NFTs, and high-frequency trading applications.

SOL is the native token of the Solana network, used for paying transaction fees, staking, and governance. Validators and delegators stake SOL to secure the network and earn rewards.

The Solana ecosystem has grown rapidly, hosting major DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and consumer applications. Its low fees have attracted retail users priced out of Ethereum.

Solana uses a unique combination of proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-history (PoH). PoH creates a historical record that proves events occurred at a specific moment in time, reducing the overhead needed for consensus.

Proof-of-history works like a cryptographic clock, allowing validators to agree on the time and order of events without communicating with each other. This dramatically speeds up consensus.

Solana also uses several other innovations: Tower BFT (optimized Byzantine fault tolerance), Turbine (block propagation protocol), Gulf Stream (mempool-less transaction forwarding), and Sealevel (parallel smart contract runtime).

Validators stake SOL and are selected to produce blocks based on their stake. Delegators can stake their SOL with validators to earn rewards and help secure the network.