Exchange Solana (SOL)

Solana is a highly functional blockchain network that provides decentralized finance solutions. The idea and the initial work on the project started in early 2017, but the actual launch only happened in March 2020. It was founded by Solana Foundation — the organization created by software engineer Anatoly Yakovenko and his colleague Steve Fitzgerald.

The goal of Solana is to facilitate the creation of dApps along with offering unprecedented scalability, which is achieved with the combined consensus mechanism: a new Proof-of-History (PoH) algorithm with a supporting Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. This innovative model makes Solana suitable for both small-time and institutional traders. With the use of this technology, Solana makes decentralized finance more accessible. 

Proof-of-History consensus mechanism was invented by Anatoly Yakovenko and it improves the network’s scalability, enabling the network to carry out up to 50,000 transactions per second. PoH algorithm uses cryptography to establish a trustless source of time for the system and also to maintain a certain degree of decentralization. The immutable record of all the events on the network is being created to store the historical data chronologically. PoH is not used directly for consensus but mainly to ensure the synchronicity of the nodes.

Solana is also an open-source blockchain and thus provides greater efficiency than other networks with just a few hundred nodes. Each node creates its own timestamp and the leader of each node sequences the messages while the others process the transaction. Once it is done the validators/replicators settle the operation and publish their signatures when the transactions are confirmed. The confirmations are considered as votes and then with the use of the PoS voting mechanism the leader of the network is being elected. 

One more innovation of Solana is the Tower BFT Consensus which allows for a global source of time through PoH. Thus, the users can see all the functions of the blockchain and also minimizes transaction latency and message overhead. 

Turbine allows the seamless transportation of the data to nodes on the blockchain. For this, it mirrors the BitTorrents propagation technique and breaks data into smaller packets that are sent out alongside erasure codes. 

Solana’s Gulf Stream Protocol helps to reduce confirmation and leader switching periods, which leads to decreased pressure on the validators in the unconfirmed validation pool. The network also employs a hyper-parallelized transaction processing mechanism called Sealevel so that the blockchain can process thousands of smart contract calls at once.

Thanks to its Pipelining infrastructure Solana validates the transactions faster and also replicates transaction information across the nodes no matter what their hardware specifications are. Cloudbreak protocol provides the necessary scalability for the blockchain. It allows the data across the network to be read and written simultaneously, while the Archivers are used to download the information from the network into the distributed ledger storage. 

As Solana employs this wide set of technologies for speed and it doesn’t depend on sharding or any other layer-2 solution. So the developers can deploy their apps directly on the chain, unlike other big and slower blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin. 

SOL is the native cryptocurrency of the Solana network. It is used to validate the transactions through the PoS mechanism. In order to do that users should stake their tokens. The SOL coin is also used to govern the network, pay the gas fees and reward the users. It has a maximum supply of 500 million tokens, with over 270 million in the current circulation. Around 60% of the assets are controlled by the Solana Foundation and only 38% are released to the community.