The dual drivers of technological innovation and institutional adoption are pushing Solana to new heights in the blockchain world.
In recent years, Solana (SOL) has emerged in the cryptocurrency space with its high-performance blockchain platform. It has become a strong competitor among 'Ethereum killers' due to its unique hybrid consensus mechanism, high-speed low-cost transaction processing capabilities, and an increasingly expanding ecosystem. Especially entering 2025, Solana has made significant progress in technological iteration, ecological applications, and institutional adoption, and the market performance of its native token SOL has also drawn considerable attention.
1. Technological Foundation: PoH and PoS Hybrid Consensus Creates High Performance
Solana's core competitiveness stems from its innovative technological architecture. It combines Proof of History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS) in a hybrid consensus mechanism. PoH is not a consensus mechanism itself but a 'clock' that timestamps events and transactions using a verifiable delay function, greatly reducing the communication overhead required to reach consensus among nodes. This enables the Solana network to achieve astonishing throughput: theoretical peak can reach 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), with actual daily processing around 1,439 TPS, and achieving sub-second block finality. In contrast, many traditional blockchains have TPS only between 10-30, and final confirmation times often take minutes or longer. Furthermore, Solana's transaction fees are extremely low, with costs as low as $0.00025 per transaction, providing a solid foundation for large-scale applications.
2. Ecological Expansion: The Explosion of DeFi, NFT, and RWA Applications
Solana's high performance provides fertile ground for the prosperity of its ecosystem. In 2025, its decentralized finance (DeFi), NFT, GameFi, and tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) have all experienced significant growth. In the DeFi sector, key projects on Solana handle billions of dollars in transactions daily and drive the value capture of SOL through significant liquidity locking. Liquid staking derivatives like JitoSOL and mSOL operate as multifunctional assets across the Solana DeFi ecosystem, serving as collateral for various protocols and providing liquidity. Tokenization of RWA has become the new narrative focus for Solana in 2025. In August 2025, China Merchants Bank International (CMBI), a subsidiary of China Merchants Bank, in collaboration with institutions like DigiFT and OnChain, launched the world's first tokenized public fund on the Solana chain—CMBMINT. This is a US dollar money market fund that invests in short-term high-quality US dollar deposits, treasury bills, and other low-volatility instruments, pursuing capital preservation and stable returns. This fund has also received regulatory recognition in Hong Kong and Singapore, achieving cross-border mutual recognition and breaking the compliance barriers for RWA in cross-border issuance. CMBI chose Solana for its advantages of high speed, low cost, and high programmability, which can support complex operations such as fund issuance, transfer, compliance checks, and redemption.
3. Market Performance: Support Behind SOL's Price Breakthrough of $200
A strong technological foundation and vibrant ecological applications have translated into SOL's robust market performance. In August 2025, the price of SOL successfully broke through the critical psychological barrier of $200. Analysts believe that this round of SOL's rise is not simply a 'speculative increase,' but is driven by record levels of on-chain activity, DeFi growth, and macroeconomic positives. Its daily active wallet count neared 3 million, blockchain throughput doubled since July, and the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi also reached its highest point since 2022. Additionally, expanding NFT activity, GameFi adoption, and Visa's recent USDC settlement pilot on the Solana network have all added credibility to its upward trend. Institutional interest in SOL is also becoming increasingly apparent. Data shows that four listed companies have cumulatively held over 3.5 million SOL tokens, accounting for about 0.65% of the circulating supply. For example, Upexi has accumulated 1.9 million SOL within four months since April 2025, and DeFi Developments Corp holds 1,182,685 SOL. This level of institutional accumulation provides additional support for its price.
4. Economic Model: Staking Rewards and Network Security
The SOL token plays multiple key roles in the Solana network: paying transaction fees (Gas fees), participating in staking for network security maintenance, and engaging in on-chain governance. Users can participate in network validation and earn rewards by staking SOL. In April 2025, the native staking annual percentage yield (APY) for SOL was approximately between 6%-8%. This yield rate is influenced by the network's inflation rate (around 4.7% at that time), the staking participation rate (approximately 67.7%), and the validator commission rate, among other factors. Through clients like Jito, validators can also earn additional tip income from MEV (maximum extractable value), which is also shared with stakers. A high staking rate not only brings rewards to participants but also further strengthens the security and decentralization of the Solana network.
5. Challenges and Future: Opportunities and Risks Coexist
Despite rapid development, Solana also faces some challenges. Its network has experienced downtimes in the past, exposing the risks that may exist in complex systems. At the same time, the network has a high transaction failure rate during peak loads (up to 35% during peak times), as well as issues related to MEV, and the data storage pressure caused by rapid state growth, all of which require continuous optimization and improvement. From a market competition perspective, Solana also faces competitive pressure from other emerging public chains (such as Base, etc.). The uncertainty of regulatory policies is also a common risk that all cryptocurrencies need to face. However, Solana's future plans include improving token issuance protocols, clients, ecological SDKs, and more. Its high performance provides a broader space for application exploration, and a strategy aimed at consumer applications is expected to bring breakthroughs.
Solana's future development still needs to address challenges such as network stability and transaction failure rates, and will need to continue innovating amid fierce public chain competition. However, its technological strength, active ecosystem, and institutional favor position it as an important player in the cryptocurrency field. As blockchain technology moves towards large-scale applications, Solana is expected to occupy a place in building the next generation of internet infrastructure.