Touted as an “Ethereum Killer” because of its scalability, ultrafast transaction speeds, and low gas costs Solana is a still relatively unknown blockchain. This essay will cover the history of Solana and some of its key features as well as some of its works in progress.

Blazing Speed, Hold the Gas

Solana was founded on the principle that current blockchains were handling transactions too slowly; in particular, they didn’t allow for an easy verification of time between validators on the blockchain. One of Solana’s co-founders, Anatoly Yakovenko, developed a proof of history algorithm, which timestamps blocks in the Solana blockchain; in addition to a delegated proof of stake algorithm, this allows Solana to address two of the three aspects of the trilemma proposed by Vitalik Buterin. Solana’s delegated proof of stake and proof of history allows it to address scalability and security by allowing for faster transaction times and more security from a combined protocol. While Ethereum, even with its resent merge, only addresses decentralization and security. With its blazing fast transaction fees and low gas prices, the Solana blockchain has prospered and become host to many dAPP developers, NFT artists, and DEFI applications. According to the Solana Foundation, the Solana blockchain hosts 140 DAOs, holds over 22 million NFTs, and has a total of eleven billion dollars in value locked on the blockchain.

The Blackout Chain?

However, despite its technological feats, Solana is not without its faults. Recently, there have been instances of blackouts on the Solana blockchain that have completely disrupted activity with the most recent being September 30, 2022, which was caused by a “misconfigured node” within the system. These blackouts have been a topic that many crypto investors have taken note of. The price of SOL, Solana’s cryptocurrency, has dropped significantly with each blackout with the most recent blackout causing it to fall from $35.08 to $32: a roughly 8% drop in value. The Solana engineers have been quiet about the estimated timeline on finding a solution to this issue but insist that it is the “bane of their existence.” Despite its faults in the three years since Solana was released in April of 2019, it has processed over 102,731,257,178 transactions with a transaction rate of 2,509 per second as of the time this essay was authored.

So the question remains: will Solana’s speed and security be the “Ethereum killer” it’s touted to be, or will the very same speedy design be its downfall? Only time will tell.