The High-Speed Blockchain with Unbeatable Fees. Solana (SOL) has been one of the most talked-about altcoins since its launch in March 2020. With an ambitious proposal to outpace Ethereum in scalability, it has achieved impressive milestones and built a vibrant ecosystem that spans from DeFi to NFTs.
🚀 Technical Performance and Scalability
The star feature of Solana is the Proof of History (PoH) mechanism, which in combination with Proof of Stake (PoS) allows for a theoretical capacity of up to 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), although the actual number hovers around 2,000 to 4,000 TPS, depending on the network. In comparison, Ethereum processes about 15-30 TPS on its main layer.
In addition to speed, the transaction latency on Solana is just 400 milliseconds, with average transaction fees of $0.00025 — virtually negligible.
💰 Market Data
• Highest price (ATH): $260, in November 2021
• Lowest price: $0.50, in May 2020
• Current market capitalization (2024): about $65 billion
• Daily trading volume: over $1.5 billion
• Token supply: Maximum of 511 million SOL, with about 440 million in circulation
The network has over 11 million active wallets and more than 2,000 projects built in its ecosystem, including Magic Eden (NFTs), Orca (DEX), Stepn (move-to-earn), among others.
⚙️ Challenges and Solutions
Despite its success, Solana faced more than 10 temporary outages between 2021 and 2022, which led to criticism regarding the network's stability. In response, the Solana Labs team implemented Firedancer, a new independent network client that promises millions of TPS in tests and more security.
📈 Future and institutional adoption
Solana is gaining institutional strength. Large funds such as Multicoin Capital, Grayscale, and Pantera Capital have exposure to SOL. The integration of solutions like Visa and Shopify for payments with USDC on the Solana network also strengthens its market position.