Solana Network - A Ultimate Guide

Solana was launched in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko from Solana Labs, a project aimed to address the issues faced by the blockchain and offer a scalable and efficient blockchain using a method Proof of History. Solana blockchain can manipulate thousands of transactions per second.

Solana Ecosystem

Solana is an autonomous blockchain with its smart contracts and native cryptocurrency, SOL. In 2020, Solana launched a Decentralized exchange called Serum. The Serum is built over a Solana network that allows it to acquire speed and reliability. DeFi projects like Raydium and Bonfida are uniting to Solana’s development with more projects like O3Swap and SolStarter on the way.

What is an SOL token?

SOL is the native cryptocurrency of Solana, works as a utility token. Users require SOL to pay transaction fees while executing a transaction or interacting with smart contracts. The network burns SOL as part of its deflation. The users having SOL can also become network validators.

SOL uses the SPL protocol. SPL is the token standard used on the Solana blockchain. The SOL token has two main use cases:

• Mode of as a transaction fee or smart contracts.
• Staking tokens as part of the Proof of Stake.

Solana Approach to Consensus

Consensus is an agreement between blockchain nodes on the new transactions. Ordering events are an important part of the consensus, it should be used efficiently. To organize the events blockchain integrates ' reliable' global time for the network and facilitates timestamps for every event to know its position relative to all other events.

Proof of Work is a mechanism for confirming the loop of time between events. Whereas, Ethereum and Bitcoin become slow and often incur costly transactions using PoW. Solana eradicates this problem with Verifiable Delay Functions and a novel mechanism called Proof of History.

How Solana Works with Proof of History?

Hash functions allow you to combine the information randomly. A hash function always yields strings of the same length, no matter the input size and type.

The Hash function produces an uninterrupted chain of hashed transactions. The hash strings are verifiable orders of transactions that a validator adds to a block, without the need for a regular timestamp.

Hashing demands a precise amount of time to complete, and it helps validators verify how much time has passed.

Using a hashed version of the latest state of transactions helps to reduce the time of confirming a new block.

It is essential to realize that Proof of History is not a consensus mechanism, and it is a way of advancing the time spent confirming the order of transactions.

By consolidated with proof of stake, picking the next validator for a block is much more comfortable. Nodes validate the order of transaction in minimal time, and the network adopts a new validator quicker.

Modern GPUs have consist of 4,000 cores, and they assist in verifying the sequence by parallel processing. Where Core 1 verifies hash 1 & 2, core 2 checks hash 2 & 3, and so on with parallel processing simultaneously.

Key Core Components of Solana

Proof of History (PoH) - a clock before consensus

This helps to generate more efficiency and higher throughput rate within the Solana network. With the help of POH it is easy to track the transaction and ordering of events in the network.

Tower BFT - PoH-optimized version of PBFT

Tower BFT is a PBFT-like algorithm that is made to take benefit of the synchronized clock. It uses the PoH as its cryptographic clock and allows consensus to be entered without messaging overhead and transaction latency.

Turbine - a block propagation protocol

The Turbine helps in transmitting data to the blokchain nodes by splitting as packets. This helps solana to address issues of bandwidth and to fix the transaction quickly.

Gulf Stream - Mempool-less transaction forwarding protocol

The Gulf Stream protocol serve by accelerating transaction caching and transmitting it to the edge of the network. This enables validators to execute the transaction quickly by reducing the confirmation time, leader switching and reduced memory usage for validators from unconfirmed transaction pools.

Sealevel - Parallel smart contracts run-time

Sealevel is a hyper parallel processing the transaction engine that aids to scale horizontally over GPUs and SSDs.

Pipeline - a Transaction Processing Unit for validation optimization

Pipelining is a stream of input data assigns to different hardwares liable for it. That allows transaction information to be quickly validated and replicated across all the nodes in the network.

Cloudbreak - Horizontally-Scaled Accounts Database

To acquire high scalability on the Solana network, it needs the use of Cloudbreak. Cloudbreak is a data structure that is best for parallel reads and writes across the network.

Archivers - Distributed ledger storage

We use Archivers for storing data. Data on Solana offloads from validators to a network of nodes known as Archivers.

Top 5 Projects Built on Solana Blockchain Platform

Raydium

It is a Defi app that works based on AMM. The uniqueness of Raydium is provides chain liquidity to the order book.

Serum

Serum is a decentralized exchange with higher efficiency and low transaction fee. The gas fees is low on solana network

Bonifida

Bonifida is the linking platform between solana and serum users. it also display data analytics of solana network

Orca

Orca is a crypto exchange platform aims to provide intutive UX to traders with Aggregator and fair price. It is advanced than AMM, as user to continue trade, it provides all the availability form Orca, Serum or liquidity pool.

Mango Markets

It is DEX based cross margin trading that leverages upto 5X. on-chain margin trading, perpetual futures are some of the basic features of platform.

Solana Blockchain becoming remarkable with its astonishing scalability features that helps in achieving higher efficiency in executing transaction with low gas fee. One can launch cryptocurrency exchange over solana blockchain to acquire enhanced trading.