What is SOLANA (SOL)?

SOLANA is a project developing a scalable blockchain protocol to create decentralized applications and smart contracts.

Who and when created SOLANA?

The founders of SOLANA-ex-employee of Qualcomm Anatoly Yakovenko, former developer Brew Greg Fitzgerald and Doctor of Physics of particles Eric Williams.

In 2017, Yakovenko published a draft of White Paper, in which he presented an algorithm for synchronization of the Proof-OF-History blockchain (POH). Later, Yakovenko, together with his former colleague in Qualcomm, Greg Fitzgerald created a blockchain in the programming language, using POH as “internal watches”. In February 2018, Yakovenko and Fitzgerald published the official version of the White Paper project and launched the first internal test network.

In 2018, Yakovenko and Fitzgerald founded a company now known as Solana Labs. The project team includes former Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Apple, Intel and Dropbox programmers.

The founders of the project called it Loom, but subsequently renamed SOLANA in order to avoid confusion with the decision of the second level of Loom Network. The project is named after Solan-Beach-a town thirty minutes drive from San Diego, where Anatoly Yakovenko lives.

From April 2018 to July 2019, the project attracted more than $ 20 million venture investments during several closed tokens. In the third quarter of 2020, the public test network of the Tour de Sol project earned. In March 2020, the beta version of the main network launched.

In June 2020, the project created SOLANA Foundation – an organization aimed at developing the SOLANA ecosystem and the adoption of decentralized technologies. Solana Labs transferred Solana Foundation 167 million SOL tokens and all intellectual property rights.

How SOLANA functions?

SOLANA strives for a decentralized NOD network correspond to the specified characteristics of a single node. For this, the interaction of GCD must be optimized. Solana solves this problem using eight key technologies.

Proof-OF-History blockchain synchronization algorithm

One of the problems of cryptocurrencies is the synchronization of nodes. Synchronization rate affects blockchain throughput. The faster it is, the more transactions per second processes the network. To use synchronization in time, you need a watch. Cryptocurrencies have their own hours and inner time – TimeStamp. It is not accurate, because there is no central watch with which you can cheat. Such synchronization is imperfect: if you focus on TimeStamp (temporary label), a new block may appear earlier than the previous one.

The Proof-OF-History protocol is not a mechanism for reaching a consensus, but a way to optimize time expenses to confirm the operation when organizing transaction procedures. It is used in tandem with Proof-OF-STAKE.

This is a decentralized watch that solve the problem of synchronization. Proof-OF-History allows you to create a chronological record confirming that the event occurred at a certain point in time. POH is a high -frequency verified delay function (VDF). It requires an assessment of a certain number of consistent steps, but it produces a unique way out, which can be publicly verified.

Other blockchains require the communication of validators, which should agree that the time has passed. SOLANA requires validators to support their watches, constantly solving VDF based on the hash function of the Sha-256. The choice of the validator is planned in advance for the entire era, which lasts thousands of blocks. For the work done, the validator receives a reward.

Proof-OF-History ensures continuous operation of the network thanks to automatic rotation, without the participation of validators. POH also allows SOLANA to optimize the time of creating a block, its reproduction, throughput and storage of data in the register.

• Sha-256 closes as quickly as possible, each exit serves as the following entrance.

• Chain samples are taken, the amount of iterations and the condition are recorded.

The recorded samples represent the past time encoded in the form of a verified data structure. Also, the chain can be used to account for events.

• A message that refers to any sample is guaranteed to be created after creating a sample;

• Messages can be embedded in the chain and has it along with the condition, guaranteeing that the message was created before the next insert.

This data structure guarantees the exact time and sequence of events.

Tower BFT is the implementation of the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) algorithm. To achieve consensus, Tower BFT uses POH as a clock that reduces the costs of computing resources and delay.

The Turbine transaction transmission protocol decides to trille the scalability of blockchain by analogy with Bittorrent. Most blockchains have fixed node throughput. An increase in the number of GCDs leads to an increase in data transfer time to each of them. Turbine solves this problem by transmitting data using the UDP protocol . To transmit each user data package, an arbitrarily selected path is used.

Creator of the Bloc (leader) divides the block into smaller bags (no more than 64 KB). For example, for a block of 128 MB, the leader creates 2000 packages of 64 KB, and then sends them to different validators. Those send packages to the new group of the closest validators (in SOLANA they are called NeighBorhood – environment). This allows each environment, which includes 200 NODs, through a third -level network, starting with a new leader, about 200 milliseconds to increase the number of participants to 40,000 validators.

GULF Stream – Transaction Transaction Protocol without using a membrane, thanks to in advance of validators in advance. Each SOLANA validator knows the procedure for changing future leaders, so it can send transactions to the expected leader in advance. This allows you to perform transactions in advance and thereby reduce confirmation time, change the leaders faster and reduce memory pressure on validators from the bullet of unconfirmed transactions.

Sealevel virtual machine simultaneously processes transactions that are horizontally scalable on graphic processors and solid -state drives. Most other blockchains are single -flow. Solana supports parallel transactions and verification of the signature in a single cartoon. This is possible thanks to the technique of the operating system driver Scatter-soby (Scatter-Gather).

Transactions report in advance what condition they will read and write in the process of execution. Sealevel finds non -overlapping transactions in the block and plans to execute them. The execution process is carried out by hardware equipment using a native by-code of Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF).

Pipeline is a means of transaction processing (Transaction Processing Unit, TPU) used to optimize the validation process. In the process of validation of transactions in the SOLANA blockchain, it is used conveyor Optimization method (Pipeling). It is effective in the framework of the model with the flow of consistently processed incoming data. A certain hardware equipment is responsible for operations at each stage.

Using Pipeline, data collection at the nucleus level, data verification – at the GPU level, banking – at the processor level, and recording – at the nucleus level.

When Pipeline sends the blocks to the validators, he gets access to the next set of packages, verifies their signatures and proceeds to accrue tokens. The parallel principle of data processing at the GPU level allows the device for processing transactions SOLANA TPU to work with high performance.

Cloudbreak is a horizontally scalable database of accounts. It allows you to optimize parallel reading and recording in solid -state drives. Each additional disk increases the memory capacity available to the onchain programs, and also increases the volume of parallel reading and recording.

This allows you to pre -select accounts from the disk and prepare the environment for transactions. Nodes can begin to perform transactions before they are encoded in the block. Due to this, the time of mining the block and delay in execution decreases.

Archivers is a distributed register storage. Storage of data in a high -performance network requires centralization. If the cost of data storage is high, users can act as validators only with significant resources and participate in the process of reaching consensus. In SOLANA, the data is not engaged in validators, but a network of NODs called architects.

Archives do not participate in the process of achieving consensus. The history of the state is divided into many fragments and noise -resistant codes. Archives store parts of the condition. SOLANA uses Proofs of Replication technology, borrowed from Filecoin. While the archives have not been implemented, but are provided for by the long -term roadmap of the project.

What mechanism of consensus does SOLANA use?

Tower BFT-Proof-OF-STAKE consensus mechanism-uses Proof-OF-History as a clock, reducing the loss of throughput and data delay.

When the validator votes for a certain Fork, the vote is limited by the fixed period of the hashes – slot. The duration of the slot is approximately 400 milliseconds. Every 400 milliseconds a potential point of restart is created. Each subsequent vote doubles the time interval that should pass before the network can block this vote. Additional vote makes it difficult to cancel the transactions performed in a certain slot.

Therefore, a block with several votes has great chances to stay part of the network. For example, each validator voted 32 times in the last 12 seconds. The 12 seconds of voting in 2³² slot – approximately 54 years old. Accordingly, the network will never cancel this vote.

At the same time, at the very last vote, two slots – about 800 milliseconds. As the blocks add to the register, the chances of confirming the old blocks increase. This is because the number of old voting slots doubles every slot.

Finalization occurs after two -thirds of the validators vote for a certain sequence of events. After the finalization of the transaction, it is impossible to turn.

Tokens holders can participate in the production process of blocks as steakers and validators, and receive a reward for this. They also have the opportunity to delegate tokens to the trusted validators.

The minimum of consumable tokens is not provided. The right to choose a leader – a validator offering another block – depends on the number of tokens in the steak.

What role in the SOLANA ecosystem plays token SOL?

SOL-Native Utile Token SOLANA blockchain. SOL uses SPL-the SOLANA token standard similar to the ERC-20 standard in Ethereum blockchain.

The share of the sole token is called lampport (Lamport), in honor of the American scientist in the field of computer science, Leslie Lampport, whose research has laid the foundations of the theory of distributed systems. One lampport is 0.0000000000582 SOL.

There are three scenarios for using SOL:

;

• Transactions commissions;

• Control.

SOLANA deflation model provides for the burning of SOL tokens.

You can store SOL tokens in Sollet.IO developed by Serm Academy, in Trust Wallet for mobile devices and in other wallets supporting the SPL standard. Some wallets support tokens staining – for example, Solflare.

How SOLANA develops?

In August 2020, the SERUM decentralized exchange earned on the SOLANA blockchain. SERUM will use the Optimistic Rollup, a second -level solution for Ethereum. With its help, cross-cards and tokenization will be introduced.

In October 2020, the SOLANA project presented the Wormhole cross-cutting, connecting Ethereum and Solana networks tokens.

In May 2021, Solana Foundation launched five funds with a total volume of assets of $ 100 million for the development of applications in China. Huobi, gate helped her in this.Io and NGC Ventures, Math Global Foundation and Hash Key.

In the same month, the project attracted $ 60 million from Hacken, Gate.Io, Coin DCX and BRZ. Funds will receive three funds focused on the expansion of ecosystems in Ukraine, India, Brazil and Russia. Financing will be directed to support the development of blockchain applications in Defi, NFT and the field of cybersecurity.

In June 2021, Solana Labs attracted $ 314 million as part of private tokensil. The round -up companies were headed by Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) and Polychain Capital with the participation of Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, Coinshares, Jump Tradeing, Multicoin Capital, Sino Global Capital and others. The attracted funds of SOLANA Labs will direct to create a venture unit for investing in its own ecosystem and launch the studio for the development of projects based on SOLANA.