$SOL
Solana was created in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former engineer at the multinational Qualcomm. Yakovenko joined his colleagues Greg Fitzgerald and Eric Williams to launch Solana to tackle the following challenge: to build a system that could process messages, cryptographic signatures, and verifications, and retransmit them to the world as quickly as possible.[3][4][5] In 2021, Bloomberg journalist Joanna Ossinger described Solana as a major competitor to Ethereum.[5]
On December 16, 2021, former US First Lady Melania Trump launched her own NFT platform running on the Solana blockchain accepting SOL cryptocurrency and credit card payments. Melania stated in a statement at the time that "a portion of the profits" from her NFT collection would be invested in orphanages.[6][7]
In January 2022, Bank of America stated that Solana could surpass Ethereum and “become the Visa” of the crypto world. Alkesh Shah, the global strategist for crypto and digital assets at the financial institution, mentioned in a note that "Solana could become the Visa of the digital assets ecosystem”.[8]