What Makes Solana Unique?

Originally launched in 2020, Solana is a layer-1 blockchain that focuses on scalability, speed, cost minimization, and energy-efficiency. Solana's innovative infrastructure maintains a single global state between different ecosystems as the network scales, eliminating the need to rely on fragmented layer-2 systems or sharded chains.

Most notably, Solana is committed to providing a fast and low-cost experience to both users and developers. It promises an admirable sub 0.01 USD transaction fee and merely 0.001 seconds in transaction processing time. Even after the transition to Proof of Stake (PoS), transaction cost and speed remains a concern amongst Ethereum users. Therefore, Ethereum rivals are focused on solving these issues, and Solana stands out as one of the most competitive alternatives to the world's second largest blockchain.

For the consensus algorithm, Solana implements an innovative hybrid model of PoS that combines a unique timestamp-based Proof of History (PoH) algorithm with a high-speed synchronization system. This allows transactions to be validated much faster, reducing the load of the Solana network and increasing its bandwidth, in other words, scalability.

How Did Solana Become Popular?

Solana saw a meteoric rise in value in fall 2021 due to a boom in NFT sales and widespread awareness of its utilities, most notably after the launch of the Wormhole 2.0 update that heightened interoperability with other high-value blockchains. The project also supports an array of DeFi platforms as well as NFT marketplaces.

Thanks to the network's high efficiency in speed, costs, and capacity, as well as an enticing staking ecosystem, Solana has become one of the most popular blockchains for DApp developers and staking users. It now sits in the ranking of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.

Solana's Technical Milestones and Why Moonstake Supports SOL

At Moonstake, we work to support the most demanded coins on the market. Here are some key milestones of Solana so far:

- From 2018 - 2019, Solana raised over 20 million for the SOL token sale to investors, despite the relatively bearish market situation after the 2017 crypto bubble.

- During the NFT craze in 2021, Solana was home to the popular Degenerate Ape Academy NFT, a collection of 10,000 apes which sold out in less than 10 minutes.

- By August 2021, over 400 projects have been built on Solana, just a little over a year since its launch. Many DeFi projects are building on Solana to take advantage of its powerful and cost-effective infrastructure.

- In September 2021, Solana launched its Wormhole 2.0 protocol that enabled the transfer of digital assets between ERC-20 and SPL blockchains. This is believed to be one of the main factors that contributed to the rise of Solana.

- Currently, Solana has over 3,400 validators to help secure and decentralize the network and is currently competing with other emerging Ethereum competitors such as Polygon and Polkadot. It has been stably sitting at rank #10 on Coinmarketcap.

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