What is Solana?
Solana is a blockchain platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications with native SOL coin. The network is designed for mass-market scenarios: thousands of transactions per second with fees of fractions of a cent.
How it works
Solana combines Proof-of-Stake with Proof-of-History mechanism — a cryptographic timestamp that allows validators to process transactions in parallel and very quickly. SOL is used for paying fees, staking, and running applications: DeFi protocols, NFT marketplaces, and payment services.
Pros and cons
- Pros: high speed and low cost of operations, active ecosystem, staking rewards.
- Cons: the network has experienced outages and shutdowns in the past, high equipment requirements for validators, volatility.