With an innovative architecture and focus on scalability, Solana stands out as one of the fastest and most efficient blockchains on the market.
Decentralized applications, or dapps, are widely considered one of the main use cases for blockchain technology. And if in the beginning it was Ethereum (ETH) that embraced this market, today it is another network that has become the biggest success in the segment, Solana (SOL).
But there's a problem. Ethereum has been struggling to keep up with this runaway demand — leading to network congestion and exorbitant transaction fees. Now, Solana, a blockchain platform that started in 2017, seeks to fill this gap and succeed where Ethereum is currently struggling.
What is Solana?
Solana is an advanced open-source blockchain project that seeks to leverage various innovative technologies to drive the next generation of dapps.
The project focuses on providing a highly scalable, secure, and maximally decentralized platform capable of potentially supporting thousands of nodes without sacrificing throughput — helping to avoid some of the challenges faced by competing systems.
It was founded in 2017, during the ICO boom, and raised over $25 million in various rounds of private and public sales. The platform went live on the mainnet in March 2020 but has never left its beta version.
How does Solana work?
One of Solana's main differentiators is its Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus system, which is reinforced by something known as Tower Consensus, or Tower BFT. This is a variant of a system that allows distributed networks to reach consensus despite attacks by malicious nodes, known as Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT).
Solana's implementation of PBFT imposes a global time source across the blockchain through a second innovative protocol known as Proof of History (PoH). This essentially provides a record of previous events on the blockchain, ensuring a common record of what happened and when, for permanent reference.
Tower Consensus uses this synchronized clock to reduce the processing power needed to verify transactions, as the date and time records of previous transactions no longer need to be computed. This helps Solana achieve a throughput rate that surpasses most competitors.
Additionally, Solana includes a number of other innovations that help it stand out from the competition. Among them is its transaction parallelism technology, known as Sealevel. This allows for parallel execution of smart contracts that optimizes resources and ensures Solana can scale horizontally across GPUs and SSDs, which should help the platform scale to meet demands.
Solana also completely eliminates the mempool system used by other platforms and instead routes transactions to validators even before the previous batch of transactions is finalized. This helps maximize confirmation speed and increase the number of transactions that can be processed simultaneously and in parallel. This technology is known as "Gulf Stream."
What is so special about it?
When it comes to decentralized applications, speed matters. Slowdowns on the network have been a persistent issue for the Ethereum network, leading to the emergence of multiple second-layer solutions.
The reason for Solana's existence is to focus exactly on this. According to the project's whitepaper, the network is theoretically capable of handling up to 710,000 transactions per second (TPS) at peak loads, which would make it arguably the fastest blockchain currently in operation.
In addition, Solana claims to have an average block time (called "slot time") of 400 to 800 milliseconds and an average transaction fee of 0.000005 SOL (or a small fraction of a cent). This, combined with its enormous scalability, positions it well to offer decentralized applications that can potentially support tens of thousands of simultaneous users without buckling under the load.
Solana achieves this scalability without resorting to second-layer or off-chain technologies and does not use any form of sharding — a technique that involves dividing a large database into smaller and more manageable parts, called data shards. Ethereum and Cardano are the two most well-known examples of blockchain networks that use sharding to deal with scalability and transaction speed problems.
Unlike some platforms, there is no minimum amount of SOL required to become a Solana validator and help secure the network. The process is completely permissionless, although users need to maintain some basic hardware to participate — that is, a server that meets the minimum specifications described here. In total, the network currently has about 2,000 validators, making it one of the most widely distributed blockchains.
The memecoin revolution
But in recent months, another factor has placed Solana at the epicenter of a new craze in the cryptocurrency universe: memecoins. Driven by the Pump.fun platform, Solana is experiencing one of its most intense moments since its inception, with record activity, thousands of new tokens launched daily, and an avalanche of users.
Pump.fun was launched in January 2024 with an audacious proposal: to allow anyone to create their own memecoin in minutes, without needing to write a single line of code. Just pay a small fee in SOL, choose a name, a symbol, and an image. The magic happens behind the scenes, with smart contracts that automate the entire process of launching and trading tokens.
The model adopted by the platform was the bonding curve, in which the price of the token automatically rises as more people buy. This creates a snowball effect: the early adopters pay less, and the next ones encourage appreciation, expecting interest to continue growing. When a token reaches a certain market value, it "graduates" and can be traded on decentralized platforms like Raydium, integrated into the Solana ecosystem.
The popularity was instantaneous. In just a few months, over 6 million tokens were launched on Pump.fun, which raised about $800 million in revenue and an impressive $500 million with the launch of the PUMP token in July 2025. At the height of the hype, in November 2024, the platform recorded around 70,000 new tokens per day, a number that left behind any other similar movement in the history of blockchains.
This frenzy has generated a positive side effect for Solana: the explosion of activity on the network has boosted transaction volume, attracted new users, and increased demand for SOL. The success of memecoins, however speculative it may be, served as a showcase for the technical capabilities of the network, especially its high speed and low transaction fees.
Recently, however, Pump.fun has seen the emergence of competition. The LetsBonk platform, for example, has surpassed Pump.fun in the number of tokens launched in a single day. The new platform managed to capture 58% of the memecoin creation market, while Pump.fun held 35%.
Still, Pump.fun maintains its benchmark position in the industry. Its simple, viral, and accessible model has democratized token launches and created an environment where internet culture, speculation, and blockchain technology uniquely blend. And while the market seeks a new balance between hype and utility, Solana reaps the rewards of having been the fertile ground where this explosion began.
What is the SOL token?
Solana, like the vast majority of smart contract platforms, has its own native token, known as SOL, which means that all transactions and smart contract operations on the Solana blockchain will consume SOL.
The SOL token can also be used in staking to help maintain network security, allowing users to earn rewards. Although this feature is not currently available, it is expected that SOL tokens will also be used for on-chain governance of the network.
Unlike Bitcoin, which has a predetermined supply limit of 21 million coins, SOL does not have a fixed supply limit, using a programmed annual inflation rate.
The SOL token was first launched on the Solana beta mainnet in March 2020 and is currently one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, with a value of $96 billion.