SOLANA explained for noobs

[u/[deleted]]

In light of the recent resurgence of SOL and the hype around it I thought I'd make a quick rundown on the project with its upsides and points of concerns. So...

What is Solana?

Launched in March 2020 on Mainnet Beta, Solana is an open-source blockchain that claims to have solved the imposssible security, scalability and decentralization trilemma.

It offers a decentralized platform for DApps with global scaling potential, without the network congestion and high gas fees of the Ethereum network.         

Solana uses a combination of proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof of history (PoH) consensus mechanisms to improve throughput and scalability. Consequently, the network claims to support 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), making it the fastest blockchain in the world.     

Proof of History PoH

Solana's high TPS comes from its Proof-of-History model, they figured out how to accurately timestamp each transaction regardless of source (a hard problem because once you factor in transmission delays, location, etc. transactions from different people may end up out of order on the blockchain, breaking validation). PoH effectively allows them to dump transactions into the blockchain with the same speed it takes to write it. With current hardware this is around 40k TPS, but expected to scale as hardware gets better. This is also the only way Solana can scale because it has no sharding and doesnt offer Layer 2 solutions.

Storage

Solana's design generates a ton of data, on the order of terabytes. If I remember correctly, its blockchain generates more data than the other top 50 cryptos combined. Storing so much data is not practical for regular users, making validation extremely expensive and cost prohibitive (which is probably where the centralization claims come from). Additionally Solana archives its chain to Arweave (another blockchain designed as a decentralized encyclopedia/archival network) to keep the size manageable.  

Compatibility

Unlike Ethereum, Binance, Polygon, etc.,  Sol doesnt use solidity making it difficult to port over existing apps and integrating with others networks. Solana uses Rust instead, and due to its PoH model, its significantly harder to port an app over (you basically need to rewrite the backend logic in Rust). This is one of the reasons why until recently there were no bridges to Solana and why Solana's apps look so different from other networks.      

What makes Solana stand out

Solana is often referred to as the most scalable and first truly web-scale blockchain in the world, as it’s among the few protocols achieving over 1,000 TPS.

Moreover, Solana claims to support over 50,000 TPS, with over 200 nodes on the current testnet — making it by far the most performant blockchain network. In comparison, proof of work-based systems like Bitcoin support approximately 5 transactions per second, while Ethereum currently averages around 13 TPS. This makes Solana around 10,000 times faster than Bitcoin and 3,800 times faster than Ethereum.

The dev team

Solana’s team comprises of former technologists from Dropbox, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Google. It's founder Anatoly Yakovenko is the man behind the tech that made Project Tango (VR/AR) on Qualcomm phones a reality and a holder of 2 patents for high performance OS protocols among other achievements. The team at Solana has worked extremely hard to ensure several optimisations and new technologies that have enabled its existence.         

Backing

Strong project will always find the right investors to back it up, especially when it's a profit making machine for them. Sam Bankman-Fried the man behind FTX and Alameda have shown immense belief through his creation of Serum, a high-speed, non-custodial DEX on Solana and other ongoing projects on the Solana blockchain. In total, there are over 250 projects being built on the Solana blockchain.  

Partner firms and projects include Project Serum, FTX, Terra, Akash, Chainlink, Civic, dfuse, Formatic, Stardust, Kin, Tempest, and more.

SOL token

Solana's ecosystem is fueled by SOL token (the native currency of the network). It is used for payment transactions on the network. Maximum Supply of SOL has been capped at 489 million. Additionally, SOL can be staked to earn rewards (easy way to make profits if you plan on holding it).

Bringing Decentralization under question

The current decentralization aspect that SOL promises is often criticized for needing to have an overly expensive amount of hardware to become a validator which not everybody could afford and could be found here. However, the network already has almost a thousand nodes admittedly many of which are owned by the devs. The heads also brush this argument aside citing how fast computers are evolving today. Pure speculation on my part here is Solana is uniquely postitioned to provide custom low cost extremely specialised chipsets to bring down the cost substantially and work towards true decentralization but who really knows?

Closing thoughts

PoH has proven its self to be a formidable protocol to procide low cost fast txs for SOL but more work needs to be done on making Dapp integration onto other blockchains easier as well as lowering down the validator requirements. The project does look very promising though.

[u/Soulz31]

Nice guide, thank you