Author: Techub Curated Translation
By: Jasir Jawaid, Coin Bureau
Translated by: Glendon, Techub News
From DeFi trading to payments and gaming, real-world applications have exposed a gap between the ambitious visions of blockchain protocols and their actual performance. Networks once praised for high throughput often struggle under peak demand, leading to delayed transactions, skyrocketing fees, and even network outages.
For developers building consumer-facing applications, this friction can be a fatal flaw—degrading the user experience and driving users away. As a result, the competition among Layer 1 blockchains has evolved beyond pure innovation to focus on proven execution. Today, reliability, network uptime, and developer support are just as critical as scalability when evaluating a blockchain's competitiveness.
In this landscape, Solana has emerged as a highly competitive project—not just for its transaction speed, but for its ability to tackle some of the biggest challenges across the crypto space.
Coin Bureau first reviewed Solana back in 2020. Since then, the network has evolved significantly, both technically and culturally. With major technical upgrades now complete, a continuously expanding ecosystem, and a broadening range of applications, Solana is no longer just a high-speed alternative to Ethereum. Given these developments, a fresh review and reassessment of Solana is warranted.
Key Takeaways
Solana is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain that uses innovative technologies like Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT to enable fast, low-cost, and scalable transactions.
Its ecosystem supports DeFi, NFTs, gaming, payments, and meme coins, with tools like Blinks, Firedancer, and Sealevel enhancing performance and user experience.
Solana's native token, SOL, is used for staking, trading, governance, and validator incentives, with an inflation rate that gradually declines over time.
Upgrades like Firedancer and Alpenglow aim to improve network stability, decentralization, and sub-second finality for real-time applications.
Now a preferred blockchain for both builders and users, Solana continues to gain traction by delivering performance, usability, and developer-friendly tools that go far beyond raw speed.
Solana
Solana is a high-performance, open-source Layer 1 blockchain designed for fast, scalable, and low-cost transactions. It was created to overcome the limitations of earlier platforms like Ethereum, providing a bottleneck-free, low-fee environment for DApps, smart contracts, and digital assets.
Proof of History (PoH) is the foundation of Solana's architecture, enabling ultra-fast cryptographic timestamping and transaction ordering—the key to its high throughput. The network's theoretical maximum capacity is 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), though this is an idealized benchmark achieved only in controlled tests. In real-world operation, Solana typically processes thousands of TPS. At the time of writing, its live throughput is reported at around 3,700 TPS.
Compared to Ethereum's ~15 TPS and Bitcoin's 7 TPS, Solana's performance is compelling.
Unlike other blockchains that rely on layered architectures or external scaling solutions, Solana uses a monolithic design where all operations occur on a single chain. By leveraging validators and optimizing runtime efficiency, the network avoids fragmentation and achieves faster finality. This makes Solana a top choice for DeFi, NFT, and GameFi developers. Ecosystem projects like Jupiter, Magic Eden, and Metaplex continue to push the boundaries of Web3.
SOL, Solana's native token, plays a pivotal role: it powers transaction fees, validator staking, and network security. As Solana's adoption grows, SOL has also become a core asset in cross-chain infrastructure, with bridges like Wormhole and Circle's CCTP enabling seamless value transfer across ecosystems.
Solana's Development Timeline
Solana's Founding Timeline
November 2017: Anatoly Yakovenko publishes the "Proof of History" whitepaper, introducing a novel cryptographic method for timestamping blockchain events.
Early 2018: Yakovenko and Greg Fitzgerald launch the first internal testnet, capable of processing 10,000 transactions in half a second.
Mid-2018: The project is renamed from "Loom" to "Solana", inspired by Solana Beach in California.
2019: Yakovenko, Raj Gokal, Fitzgerald, and Stephen Akridge—former colleagues at Qualcomm—officially establish Solana Labs.
2020: Solana's mainnet beta launches, bringing high-throughput functionality to the public blockchain space.
2021: Solana experiences explosive growth, fueled by Ethereum's high gas fees and early DApps like Serum, which was supported by FTX.
2022: The collapse of FTX triggers a sharp decline in SOL's price, critical DApps falter, and the network enters a crisis period.
2023–2025: Solana rebuilds with a focus on decentralization, rolling out product upgrades like Firedancer, Blinks, and Actions to enhance the user experience.
Drawing on his research in distributed systems and compression algorithms, Anatoly Yakovenko published a whitepaper introducing a new concept he called "Proof of History" (PoH). Unlike traditional consensus mechanisms, PoH provides a novel cryptographic method for timestamping events and establishing verifiable transaction sequences, which significantly accelerates execution speed (explained in detail later). We'll explore this further in the next section.
Anatoly initially built the prototype in C but later rewrote it entirely in Rust after recognizing Rust's superior safety and performance. At the time, Rust was still emerging in crypto, and Solana's adoption attracted many developers eager to build with a modern, high-performance language. To bring this vision to life, Anatoly partnered with former Qualcomm colleague Greg Fitzgerald to launch the project's first testnet in early 2018. It achieved a remarkable milestone: processing 10,000 transactions in 0.5 seconds, hinting at Solana's potential.
The project was originally named "Loom" but was renamed to avoid confusion with the existing Ethereum-based Loom Network. Inspired by Solana Beach in California—a spot the team frequented during their Qualcomm days—the blockchain was rebranded "Solana". After finalizing the name and validating the technology, Anatoly invited Raj Gokal and another Qualcomm alumnus, Stephen Akridge, to join the founding team.
By 2021, Solana had captured the attention of developers and users frustrated by Ethereum's high gas fees. However, its initial breakthrough was largely driven by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) and his FTX/Alameda ecosystem. Through the high-performance on-chain order book Serum and related projects like Bonfida, Oxygen, and Maps, FTX became a primary force behind Solana's early adoption. While some of these projects have since faded, Solana's network momentum has endured.
Solana's rapid ascent, however, has not been smooth. Frequent network outages and concerns over centralization have repeatedly tarnished its reputation. Then, in late 2022, the collapse of FTX dealt a severe blow: SOL's price plummeted, DApps dependent on Serum faltered, and the network's reputation hit rock bottom. Many at the time declared Solana "dead."
Yet Solana did not succumb. The subsequent rebuilding phase showcased the resilience of its ecosystem—proving it could thrive independently of FTX's influence.
What Makes Solana Unique
Why has Solana managed to stand out in the fiercely competitive blockchain landscape?
History Proves: Solana's Speed Secret
One of the most challenging problems in distributed systems is time. Without a centralized clock, how can you prove the order of events without requiring nodes to constantly cross-verify with each other? Most blockchains rely on loosely synchronized timestamps or inter-node consensus, which can hamper performance. Solana takes a different approach: its Proof of History (PoH) creates a verifiable, chronological timeline of events.
At its core, PoH acts as a cryptographic clock. It allows the Solana network to record events in a specific, verifiable sequence without needing real-time coordination among all nodes. Validators no longer have to ask, "When did this transaction happen?" Instead, they simply check the historical record, which proves each transaction's timing relative to others—dramatically cutting down the time and computational power needed to reach consensus.
PoH is powered by a Verifiable Delay Function (VDF)—a cryptographic process that requires a fixed amount of real-world time to compute and cannot be shortcut. In Solana, this function involves continuously running the secure hash function SHA256, where each output becomes the input for the next round. This sequential hashing acts like a digital metronome, with each new output marking the passage of network time.
The current state and counter of this process are periodically recorded and published. Because each output depends on the previous one—and because the hash function is preimage-resistant and collision-resistant—the timeline cannot be forged, jumped ahead, rewritten, or predicted. Just as photographing today's newspaper proves when the photo was taken, inserting data into the PoH sequence proves when that data existed.
When Solana generates a block, the designated leader node packages transactions, timestamps them using PoH, and shares the result with the network. Other validators can then independently and quickly verify the block's authenticity and order—without cross-checking—enabling faster block times, lower latency, and near-instant finality.
Another advantage of this system is parallel verification. While generating the PoH sequence must run sequentially on a single CPU core, verification can be distributed across multiple cores—or even GPUs. This ensures scalability and security, even under heavy load.
Rust Programming Language
Unlike Ethereum, which uses languages like Solidity and Vyper, Solana smart contracts—called "programs"—are written primarily in Rust.
Rust is a low-level programming language designed for performance and safety. Originally developed by Mozilla, it aims to solve common issues in languages like C and C++, particularly around memory management and concurrency. Rust's key advantage is achieving C/C++-level speed while minimizing errors like memory leaks and data races.
One of Rust's greatest strengths is enabling Solana to process transactions in parallel—scaling the network without compromising security. Moreover, Rust's large developer community makes it easier for non-Web3 engineers to build on Solana, allowing them to develop without learning an entirely new tech stack.
Thanks to its versatility, Rust's applications now extend far beyond Solana—powering operating systems, browser engines, and newer blockchains like Aptos and Sui through Rust-based languages such as Move.
Solana Technical Analysis
Beyond its innovative PoH, Solana boasts several other technical highlights.
Tower BFT (Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance)
Rather than adopting a traditional consensus model, Solana uses Tower BFT—a custom system built on Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). The key difference is that Solana leverages PoH to maintain global time synchronization across the network, eliminating the need for validators to constantly communicate before reaching consensus—saving time and reducing network overhead.
Here's how it works: When a validator votes on a block, they commit to maintaining that vote for a set number of hash cycles. Each time they vote again on the same chain, their timeout period doubles—making earlier votes increasingly hard to revoke. Over time, votes accumulate "weight," making rollbacks virtually impossible. It's an elegant system that rewards consistency: one vote might be revoked within seconds, while another could require years—helping the network achieve finality quickly.
Because PoH provides a tamper-proof timeline, validators don't need to query each other about event sequencing—they only need to consult the ledger to verify everything. If a fork occurs (and they do), validators naturally select the chain with the longest cumulative timeout, which is also the chain most likely to yield rewards.
Turbine
How does Solana quickly confirm and propagate transactions across a global network? The answer lies in its custom block propagation protocol, Turbine. Unlike the "flooding" method used by traditional blockchains—where nodes broadcast new blocks to all reachable peers—Turbine takes a more structured approach. Flooding may work for smaller networks, but it becomes inefficient and bandwidth-heavy as scale increases.
Turbine solves this by splitting each block into small pieces called "shreds," which are disseminated across the network using a hierarchical tree structure. Instead of sending the full block to every validator, the leader node sends different shreds to a select few peer nodes, who then forward them to others—and so on. This reduces the load on each node and dramatically speeds up block data propagation.
Gulf Stream
In most blockchains, transactions first enter a "mempool"—essentially a waiting area—where they sit until selected and bundled into a block. Validators typically prioritize high-fee transactions, which can cause congestion and long delays during peak periods. It's a functional system, but far from optimal.
Solana bypasses the mempool entirely via the Gulf Stream protocol. Transactions don't wait in a pool; instead, they are immediately forwarded to the current block producer—and even to the next few scheduled leaders—because PoH allows Solana to precisely determine the next node in line. This predictability lets upcoming validators "pre-cache" transactions, reducing latency and improving efficiency.
Sealevel
Most blockchains process smart contract transactions sequentially—like traffic stuck on a single-lane road. Sealevel, Solana's parallel execution engine, allows multiple smart contracts that don't access overlapping data to run simultaneously—akin to a multi-lane highway. Simply put, before execution, Sealevel analyzes each contract's resource requirements and checks for operational conflicts. If there's no overlap, execution proceeds in parallel. This design significantly boosts throughput without sacrificing security.
Pipelining
Taking inspiration from modern CPU task processing, Solana employs pipelining technology to break down transaction validation into multiple stages. This allows different stages of a transaction to be processed in parallel within the Transaction Processing Unit (TPU). While one section of the TPU fetches transactions, others can simultaneously verify signatures or execute smart contract instructions, creating an efficient pipeline workflow.
Cloudbreak
Storing all account data in a single, ever-growing database might work at a small scale, but it becomes a major bottleneck as the blockchain expands. To support thousands of applications and global adoption, the network needs a more sophisticated storage solution. Solana addresses this with Cloudbreak, a horizontally scalable storage system that distributes data across multiple dedicated units—think of it as a series of organized file cabinets rather than one overloaded drawer.
Cloudbreak's efficiency comes from its optimized handling of reads and writes. For fast queries, like checking a token balance, requests are spread across multiple storage units for near-instant responses. When updates are needed—such as during a token transfer—only the specific accounts involved are temporarily locked, leaving the rest of the system fully operational. This design prevents network congestion even during peak activity.
Archivers
Solana's ability to process thousands of transactions per second generates a massive amount of historical data. If validators had to store every transaction and block themselves, they would quickly be overwhelmed. This is where archivers come in. These specialized nodes are responsible for storing Solana's historical ledger data. Think of them as the network's librarians—they don't validate transactions or produce new blocks, but they ensure the blockchain's complete history remains secure, accessible, and intact.
SOL Token
SOL is Solana's native token, serving as the fuel, collateral, and economic backbone of the entire ecosystem. Whether you're buying NFTs, swapping tokens, or running a validator node, SOL powers the activity.
SOL Token Economics
SOL plays several critical roles in network operations:
• Paying transaction fees (similar to gas on Ethereum, but at a significantly lower cost);
• Staking with validators to help secure the network and earn rewards;
• Interacting with smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps);
• Participating in governance voting (subject to future network upgrades).
SOL Tokenomics:
• Total SOL Supply: ~601.5 million
• Circulating Supply: ~520.3 million (86.5%)
• Non-Circulating Supply: ~81.2 million (13.5%)
The circulating supply includes SOL held on exchanges and in wallets, as well as staked SOL (which can be unstaked at any time and is therefore considered liquid).
The non-circulating supply includes locked staking accounts (e.g., tokens subject to vesting schedules from investments or grants) and foundation-held staked SOL. The latter is not locked but is delegated through programs to promote network decentralization.
An important clarification: Locked ≠ Staked. Most staked SOL is *not* locked. "Locked" SOL refers specifically to tokens that cannot be withdrawn or transferred before a predetermined date.
Inflation Mechanism: Where New SOL Comes From
• Current SOL inflation rate: 4.514%
• The initial rate was 8%, decreasing annually by approximately 15% (adjusted roughly every 180 epochs).
Solana's inflation rate is designed to decline over time, meaning fewer new SOL tokens are minted each year to support long-term sustainability. Stakers receive rewards from this inflation, which gradually dilutes the holdings of non-stakers. Additionally, half of each transaction fee is burned, while the other half goes to validators. Solana's long-term goal is for validator income to come primarily from fee revenue, eventually replacing inflation entirely.
Solana Use Cases
As an infrastructure layer, Solana supports a wide range of real-world applications—from payments and NFTs to institutional solutions and gaming. Its strength lies in tangible adoption, not just conceptual hype. Today, the ecosystem hosts billions of dollars in DeFi assets, tens of thousands of daily active users, and boasts enterprise partnerships with names like Google Cloud, Mastercard, and Shopify.
Key Domain Drivers
• DeFi: Platforms like Jupiter, Orca, and Kamino are leading a DeFi renaissance, combining high throughput with MEV optimization and automated vault strategies.
• NFTs & Digital Culture: Projects like Magic Eden have established Solana as a leader in NFT infrastructure.
• Enterprise Integration: Shopify merchants use Solana Pay plugins; Mastercard is building crypto credentials on Solana; brands like Asics and Boba Guys launch tokenized products.
• Gaming: Hundreds of games, including Star Atlas and Aurory, are advancing on-chain gaming via the Solana Games Kit and native engines like Magicblock.
• DApps & Tooling: With Rust, Anchor, and a rich SDK ecosystem, developer activity continues to grow. Total Value Locked (TVL) has surpassed $9 billion.
Firedancer: Solana’s Second Engine
Firedancer is a new, from-scratch validator client for the Solana blockchain, built by Jump Crypto. Currently, Solana relies primarily on a single client (Agave). Relying on just one client creates a single point of failure—if it fails, the entire network is at risk. Firedancer solves this by providing Solana with a fully independent, alternative engine.
Key Takeaways:
• Firedancer provides Solana with a second, fully independent validator client, reducing reliance on Agave and eliminating a critical single point of failure.
Built for extreme speed, it has achieved over 1 million transactions per second (TPS) in lab benchmarks.
Its modular, "sharded" architecture allows individual components to operate independently, boosting fault tolerance.
Firedancer features a custom-built network stack designed to cut latency and improve data processing efficiency.
It strengthens decentralization by introducing client diversity to the validator ecosystem.
Written in C/C++, it delivers optimal performance and fine-grained control over system-level operations.
A hybrid version called Frankendancer is already live, with a full mainnet deployment slated for later in 2025.
Alpenglow: A Consensus Revolution
Solana developers recently unveiled a major proposal that goes beyond incremental tweaks. Alpenglow is an entirely new consensus system designed to potentially replace Solana's current core components: Proof of History (PoH) and Tower BFT. Developers describe it not as a simple upgrade, but as a fundamental rethinking of how Solana finalizes transactions and propagates data.
While PoH and Tower BFT have significantly boosted Solana's efficiency, they can become complex and slow under heavy network load. Alpenglow proposes two key alternatives to address this.
Votor: A new block finality system capable of reaching consensus in 100–150 milliseconds.
- One round of voting is enough if 80% of validators are online.
- If only 60% respond, it automatically escalates to two rounds.
Rotor: A novel data relaying system that improves upon Solana's Turbine protocol.
- Fewer "hops" between nodes.
- Smarter relay node selection.
- Better bandwidth allocation for faster data transmission.
Together, these systems aim to simplify consensus, reduce coordination latency, and improve overall network responsiveness.
Why does this matter? The implications extend far beyond backend optimization. If successfully deployed, Alpenglow could reshape the types of applications Solana can support—particularly real-time, high-frequency use cases. In practical terms, this could mean:
- Sub-second finality: Transactions confirmed in the blink of an eye.
- Real-time applications: Gaming, finance, and social DApps that feel truly instantaneous.
- Improved user experience: Faster confirmations mean less waiting and fewer retries.
- Increased SOL demand: More applications → more users → more transactions.
Alpenglow currently has no official launch date. Its whitepaper is published, and community discussions are underway. If executed as planned, Solana could become the first major Layer 1 blockchain to consistently deliver provably sub-second finality.
Solana Ecosystem Overview
Jupiter
Starting as a DEX aggregator for optimal on-chain trades, Jupiter has evolved into Solana's premier DeFi portal. It now offers everything from perpetual contracts and token launches to portfolio trackers and its own token terminal.
Strategic acquisitions have fueled Jupiter's growth, including SonarWatch, Coinhall, Solana.FM, MoonShot, and, most recently, the NFT launch platform DRiP Haus. According to the latest DeFiLlama data, Jupiter has quietly become Solana's top fee-generating protocol—earning $1.7 million daily even after the memecoin hype cooled.
Meteora
Owned by the Jupiter team and powered by DLMM (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker), Meteora is a Solana liquidity management platform. It has become the go-to venue for meme tokens like MELANIA, ME, and PENGU.
Raydium
Solana's leading DEX, Raydium, is launching LaunchLab—a token launch platform designed to compete directly with Pump.fun.
Pump.fun
Launched in early 2024, Pump.fun immediately defined Solana's new era with its blend of chaos and creativity. It allows anyone to create a token in seconds. The platform has generated over $500 million in revenue and is building its own micro-ecosystem. It recently launched its native DEX, PumpSwap, featuring lower fees and creator revenue sharing. All tokens created on Pump.fun now default to PumpSwap instead of Raydium.
Kamino
After refining its vault system and launching Lend V2, Kamino has become Solana's largest lending protocol, with TVL exceeding $2.5 billion. Its "Vault Layer" automates and optimizes cross-pool lending, while "Scam Wick Protection" shields users from sudden, artificial price spikes during liquidations, enhancing lending safety.
Solayer
Effectively Solana's answer to EigenLayer, Solayer started as a restaking project but has rapidly expanded. It now operates its own USD-pegged stablecoin (sUSD), a growing DeFi hub, and is developing Solayer InfiniSVM—a hardware-accelerated SVM Layer 1 chain.
Solana Meme Coins
Thanks to its robust technical foundation and vibrant community, Solana has quickly become the go-to platform for launching and trading meme coins. While often seen as speculative or playful assets, the success of meme coins on Solana is deeply connected to the network's unique advantages.
Solana is built for speed and scale. Transactions finalize in about 400 milliseconds, enabling near-instant execution even under heavy load. Combined with extremely low fees—averaging just $0.0006 SOL per transaction—the network makes high-volume interaction affordable for developers and users alike.
Several key features make Solana particularly well-suited for meme coin activity:
High throughput keeps the network responsive during massive token launches;
Developers can build fully on-chain programs without relying on centralized servers or intermediaries;
Near-zero transaction fees lower the barrier to entry for creators and traders.
Beyond its technical strengths, Solana's meme coin ecosystem thrives on a highly engaged community. From coordinated campaigns on Twitter and Telegram to rapid meme-sharing within NFT circles, Solana users actively discover, promote, and trade new tokens.
This grassroots energy makes Solana an ideal testing ground for viral token distribution. Unlike other blockchains where high fees or slow confirmations can stifle experimentation, Solana allows meme coin projects to launch and scale quickly at minimal cost.
Summary
Today, Solana has matured from a high-speed experiment into resilient infrastructure. With innovations like its Proof-of-History (PoH) mechanism, the Firedancer validator client, and the Blinks state synchronization protocol, Solana is overcoming the technical bottlenecks of other Layer 1s—delivering tools that feel intuitive to Web2 users and are essential for Web3 builders.
As the network continues to evolve through upgrades like Alpenglow and Firedancer, the central question is no longer "Can Solana handle the demand?" but rather, "How will developers use its speed, efficiency, and flexibility to build the next generation of applications?"