Introduction to Solana Crypto (SOL): The First Web-scale Blockchain

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Solana (SOL) is expected to be one of the most valuable blockchains in 2021 due to its incredible speed and low transaction cost. Solana’s framework was designed to scale in a decentralized way, supporting an enormous number of decentralized apps without having extremely high transaction fees or slowing down (an issue currently affecting the Ethereum ecosystem).

Solana transactions may cost as little as $0.001.

One of Solana’s primary objectives is to overcome the scalability limitations of existing blockchain technology. Designed from the bottom up to conduct 50,000 transactions per second, Solana was created with speed and scalability in mind. It directly competes with other payment systems like Visa or PayPal.

Finally, Solana’s transactions are verified with sub-second confirmation periods, allowing users to execute transactions without waiting. Different traders request near-instant trade times, making Solana a viable blockchain for decentralized trading and finance.

Background

Anatoly Yakovenko started Solana (SOL) in 2017. Yakovenko is a software engineer with extensive expertise in compression algorithms who formerly worked for Dropbox and Qualcomm. He first published the Solana white paper, which detailed Proof of History and how it may be utilized to accelerate both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work blockchains, back in January 2018.

Following the principles set out in their white paper, Solana’s CTO and co-founder Greg Fitzgerald, along with Eric Williams, came up with a new approach to address the throughput issues in both Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. They planned a distributed and trustless mechanism that increased scalability, which is how Solana came into being.

Key Innovations of Solana

Solana’s system includes eight key innovations that are unavailable elsewhere. These advances improved how information is sent throughout a network to make Solana as quick as data transfer. Let’s take a look at each of these key innovations in detail.


Related Reading: Should I buy Solana (SOL) in 2021?


Proof of History (PoH)

Solana has developed a new solution to make a blockchain more decentralized. The PoH technique incorporates historical records of blockchain transactions into the distributed ledger to demonstrate that they did, in fact, take place.

The ‘Verifiable Delay Function’ is what Solana calls this mechanism. On the Solana blockchain, transactions are timestamped to help establish the order of events completed before the most recent state of the blockchain is broadcasted to the entire network.

TowerBFT

The version of PBFT Solana uses is TowerBFT. To achieve blockchain consensus without incurring significant messaging and transaction latency, the consensus mechanism employs PoH as a cryptographic clock.

When the state of the ledger is finalized, validators vote on whether or not it’s correct. After that, their vote is locked out. It means that they cannot cast a new vote for any future version of the blockchain that does not display how they voted on it before.

Turbine

By breaking down data into smaller segments, Solana makes it easier to share data across all blockchain nodes. It helps Solana mitigate bandwidth constraints and improve the speed at which it can execute transactions.

Gulf Stream

Solana can process 50,000 transactions per second on its network by reducing the time it takes to confirm a block. Gulf Stream makes catching and forwarding transactions easier before the next set of blocks for confirmation is completed.

Sealevel

To achieve a more efficient runtime for Solana, hundreds of smart contracts work in tandem. Transactions that are still in the same blockchain state may be processed simultaneously.

Pipelining

A cluster of blocks that includes transaction details is quickly confirmed and duplicated throughout the network by all nodes. Solana accomplishes this by assigning a stream of input data to separate hardware responsible for each one.

Cloudbreak

Solana’s architecture allows it to scale without the risk of sharding by putting a database in which both read and write transaction input is handled simultaneously. Cloudbreak creates a data structure that utilizes every hardware responsible for indexing data, ensuring that transactions are processed in software.

Archivers

The blockchain is replicated to every node on Solana’s network, which may be done by copying data from the blockchain as needed. Validators download data from archivers and make it available to the rest of the network.

Closing Thoughts

With the network’s speed, industry-leading throughput, and low-cost transactions, it wouldn’t be astonishing if the Solana ecosystem draws more projects in the future, accelerating global blockchain adoption. The existing market is confident about it.


Read More About Solana in LeoFinance's Crypto Guides:


About Me

My name is DeFiDoc, I'm a freelance writer and I'm new to the LeoFinance platform. I was brought in through the LeoFinance marketing organization and I'm excited to start sharing a lot of articles through the site.

My main focus is on DeFi and the world of fintech. The team has given me a list of potential topics as well as existing articles on the LeoFinance site to cross-link for better optimization.

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