Solana (blockchain platform)

Solana is a public blockchain platform with smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is SOL. Solana claims to offer faster transaction times and lower costs than its main competitor, Ethereum.

History
Solana was proposed in a white paper Anatoly Yakovenko which was published in November of 2017. This paper described a technique called "proof of history" which Yakovenko claimed would be significantly faster than existing blockchains.

In 2021, Bloomberg journalist Joanna Ossinger described Solana as "a potential long-term rival for Ethereum", citing superior transaction speeds and lower associated costs.

On 14 September 2021, the Solana blockchain went offline after a surge of transactions caused the network to fork, and different validators had different views on the state of the network. The network was brought back online the next day on 15 September 2021.

On 16 December 2021, former First Lady of the United States Melania Trump announced her plans to use Solana to launch a non-fungible token (NFT). The Solana Foundation issued a press release to clarify that her choice of the platform was not officially "part of any Solana-led initiative."

Design
Solana achieves consensus using a proof-of-stake mechanism, as well as a "proof-of-history" mechanism which Solana's whitepaper claims improves scalability without sacrificing decentralization and security.

Solana can handle 710,000 transactions per second, which is faster than the Ethereum blockchain, but still less than the 400,000 transactions seen during the spike.

Like various other blockchains, Solana can run smart contracts, known as Solana Programs. The execution environment is based on eBPF, which allows the Rust, C, and C++ programming languages to be used.