Solana

Solana is an open source project implementing a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. Solana is a general purpose blockchain similar to Ethereum. End user applications as of now include decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), marketplaces, games, and more. It aims to improve scalability by introducing a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with the underlying proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus of the blockchain.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko published a whitepaper describing Proof of History, a technique that would become critical to Solana's blockchain infrastructure, in Nov. 2017. 

Co-founder Greg Fitzgerald, who had worked with Yakovenko at Qualcomm, began prototyping the open source implementation of the whitepaper. It was published under the name Silk in 2018. 

After starting the company under the name Loom, Yakovenko, Fitzgerald, and other co-founders rebranded to Solana. Solana launched on Mainnet Beta in March 2020.

Solana was built to facilitate the development of scalable, user-friendly decentralized apps with low costs and high speeds for transactions.

Solana believes its unique blockchain architecture that combines the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and its own proof of history mechanism is the key to achieving these goals.

Proof of history works almost like a cryptographic timestamp that proves that an event has occurred at a specific time. It enables the blockchain to work fast while maintaining security and decentralization.

There are about 304 million SOL in circulation as of November 2021. Solana has an initial inflation rate of 8%, which will decrease by 15% a year until it reaches a long-term inflation rate of 1.5%. SOL is Solana’s native token.

Solana competes with other blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and Avalanche to host crypto projects such as NFTs, decentralized exchanges, and gaming. 

Developers and users flocked from Ethereum to Solana due to high transaction costs, but many could gravitate back towards Ethereum if it manages to lower costs, which could happen as a result of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade and layer 2 rollups. 

Solana.com
Docs.solana.com/history
Forums.solana.com

The proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network Solana suffered another outage on September 30 and the network restart did not take effect until six hours later on October 1.

Solana Network Suffers Another Outage — Cyber Capital Founder Says Downtime Is ‘Another Consequence of Bad Design'

Solana is back online following an outage on Friday night caused by a misconfigured node that stopped the blockchain from processing transactions. The post Solana back online following latest network outage appeared first on The Block.

Solana back online following latest network outage

The popular blockchain has suffered a handful of outages and transaction stops this year, including a string of partial outages in January.

‘Ethereum Killer' Solana Suffers Another Major Outage

Quick Take The Solana NFT ecosystem has evolved into an important pillar of the overall NFT market. The debate about NFT royalties has been swirling around Solana NFTs as well. DeGods has outperformed its competitors with a floor price increase of +1,151.5% YTD. The highly anticipated y00ts launch has made a dent in the Solana NFT universe, letting daily Solana NFT mints soar to an all-time high of 312.4K.

The State of Solana NFTs

Star Atlas just rolled out its first playable demo, plus its developer released tools to help other studios bring games to Solana.

Solana NFT Game Star Atlas Launches Playable Demo on Epic Games Store

Solana rose for a second straight day on Thursday, as the token moved closer to its long-term resistance point of $35.00. Monero was also in the green during today's session, extending recent gains in the process. Overall, markets attempted to rebound, following a red wave which swept through markets to start the week.

Biggest Movers: SOL Moves Towards $35.00, XMR Extends Recent Gains

The creators of the Anchor development framework for Solana are launching Backpack, a “first-of-its-kind” wallet supporting executable NFTs.

FTX, Jump Crypto Lead $20M Funding in Solana Development Framework Coral

The Block spoke to three Solana projects that are exploring Aptos to find out what's attracting them to the new chain. The post Aptos lures Solana developers tired of ‘eating glass' appeared first on The Block.

Aptos lures Solana developers tired of ‘eating glass'

NFT marketplace Magic Eden content head Tiffany Huang tells Decrypt's Dan Roberts and Andrew Hayward in our Decrypting Mainnet series at Mainnet 2022 about how Magic Eden's expansion to Ethereum has gone, how Solana NFTs have gained share of the overall NFT market, why she thinks even Ethereum people are paying more attention to Solana NFTs,

Tiffany Huang of Magic Eden: 'Ethereum People Are Paying a Lot of Attention to Solana NFTs'

Bitcoin

The crypto analyst who called the end of the crypto bull market is now predicting big bounces for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) challenger Solana (SOL). Popular crypto strategist Pentoshi tells his 612,000 Twitter followers that after nearly a year, he's no longer extremely bearish on Bitcoin.

Crypto Strategist Predicts Big Bounces for Bitcoin and One Ethereum Rival – Here Are His Targets

Solana's Anatoly Yakovenko believes a juggernaut IP could emerge from the current crop of NFT projects.

NFTs Will Spawn the Next Marvel or Disney, Says Solana Founder

The decentralized wireless network Helium (HNT) is officially migrating to the Solana (SOL) blockchain after a community vote upheld the decision. The Helium Foundation announced on Thursday that its community approved the move by a majority 81.41% vote on Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP) 70.

Helium (HNT) Is Officially Migrating to Solana (SOL) Blockchain After Community Vote

NFT marketplace OpenSea said it would automatically index NFT collections created on the Solana blockchain. The post OpenSea aims to automatically index Solana NFTs appeared first on The Block.

OpenSea aims to automatically index Solana NFTs

Cosmos

NEAR Protocol

Quick Take In this weekly series, we dive into some of the most interesting data and developments across the Layer 1 blockchain landscape, from DeFi and bridges to network activity and funding As L1 ecosystems continue to become more interconnected, teams in the Cosmos ecosystem are taking a variety of approaches to address the problem of fragmented liquidity.  The Solana network is nearing the release of a critical upgrade that promises to significantly improve its ability to handle user demand. Meanwhile, the Near ecosystem is seeing a spike in usage after the launch of its step-to-earn protocol Sweat Economy

Layer by Layer Issue 46: Cosmos, Solana, and NEAR

It's official: Helium is migrating to Solana following a vote. Nova Labs CEO Amir Haleem explains why Helium needed to make the change.

Helium Founder Explains Why the Crypto Wireless Network Is Moving to Solana

The Helium Foundation has announced the Helium Network's migration to the Solana blockchain following a successful community vote. The post Helium Foundation announces migration to Solana following community vote appeared first on The Block.

Helium Foundation announces migration to Solana following community vote

Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) has no shortage of supporters in the Web3 world, but the award for “most unexpected endorsement” goes to Greenpeace for endorsing Ethereum based on the Merge which moves it to a more environmentally friendly Proof-of-Stake (POS) validation system vs. the original Proof-of-Work (POW) system.

Solana Network Can Run For An Hour On Less Energy Than Is Required For A Single Bitcoin Transaction: Report

Decentralized wireless network Helium has voted to ditch its own blockchain in favor of a move to Solana's network.

Helium Community Approves Crypto Wireless Network's Migration to Solana

The partnership provides a token-gated use case for the first Solana-based project to net a sale over $1 million.  The post FastAF partners with Solana-based NFT project Degen Apes as part of token-gated merch drop appeared first on The Block.

FastAF partners with Solana-based NFT project Degen Apes as part of token-gated merch drop

Dogecoin

Avalanche

Shiba Inu

Neobank Revolut has expanded its crypto investment offering, adding 29 new tokens for its American customers. The post Revolut expands U.S. crypto offering, adding 29 tokens including dogecoin appeared first on The Block.

Revolut expands U.S. crypto offering, adding 29 tokens including dogecoin

Ethereum

Jack Lu tells Decrypt about the top Solana marketplace's embrace of Ethereum—and why Magic Eden was “worried” about the reaction.

Magic Eden CEO: ‘Very Natural' to Expand From Solana to Ethereum NFTs

A popular crypto strategist is analyzing Solana's (SOL) potential price path in relation to Bitcoin's (BTC) possible explosion during the next bull market. In a new YouTube video, the anonymous host of InvestAnswers unveils to his 444,000 subscribers a strategy for predicting Solana's value in the future.

Analyst Says Solana (SOL) Has Potential for Explosive Gains Next Bull Run – Here Are His Price Targets

Hxro's Solana-based marketplace for bitcoin derivatives is now live for certain users. The post Solana-based Hxro launches bitcoin derivatives marketplace appeared first on The Block.

Solana-based Hxro launches bitcoin derivatives marketplace

Metaplex will launch a DAO to enable community governance, with non-U.S. creators set to reap the reward of MPLX tokens.

Metaplex Set to Airdrop MPLX Tokens to Solana NFT Creators

On-chain statistics for the second quarter of this year showed that despite challenges related to both macroeconomic conditions and network disruptions, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) outpaced Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) in terms of users' daily transactions. According to Nansen's State of the Quarter Report, Solana's daily transactions steadily climbed during the second quarter, reaching a total of more than 40 million daily transactions as opposed to around one million transactions per day on Ethereum between April and June.

News for Solana Crypto (SOL)