Blockchains are the backbone of cryptocurrencies; thus, if you want to develop your currency, you must improve your Blockchain.
Scalability is the most crucial challenge for Blockchain, and competitors are constantly working to enhance it. Blockchains like Bitcoin have drawbacks like transaction time and speed, so a competitor called Ethereum came up with a solution for faster transactions, more privacy, and decentralization.
Because security is critical and decentralization is one of the basic ideas of blockchains, most projects face the difficulty of growing without jeopardizing the other features.
Here’s where Solana enters the picture. In 2017, Solana was created by Anatoly Yakovenko as solid support to the crypto industry. The Solana blockchain claims to have figured out a way to solve this problem and promises to offer faster transactions with lower fees.
What is Solana?
Solana is a decentralized crypto computing platform that promises to achieve high transaction speeds while maintaining scalable applications. Solana is an open-source, high-performance, permissionless project that enables anyone worldwide to develop crypto apps that can scale today.
The native cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain is SOL, which is utilized for transaction fees and staking. It also entitles owners to vote on future upgrades.
Solana scales well as a layer 1 blockchain, implying it doesn’t need off-chain solutions to speed up transaction processing or avoid bottlenecks.
The third-generation blockchain architecture developed by Solana is intended to make smart contracts and decentralized application (DApp) development easier. Solana is not only ultra-fast and low-cost, but it also avoids censorship. This means that the network will stay available for apps to function freely and that transactions will never be halted.
The scalability here assures its users and developers that the transaction fee is less than $0.01. In addition, Solana is all about speed, with block times of 400 milliseconds. As the hardware improves, the network improves as well.
Solana is the world’s fastest blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem, with dozens of projects spanning DeFi, gaming, NFT world, Web3, and more.
Solana’s Blockchain
Solana is modeled by Proof-of-History(PoH) and Proof-of-Stake(PoS). PoS allows validators to verify transactions using the number of coins or tokens they have, while PoH enables those transactions to be time stamped and confirmed in a short period.
Here, Proof-of-stake owners of cryptocurrencies guarantee, or “stake,” their coins to a validator via Proof-of-Stake. Then, validators are chosen to add the following block of transactions based on how much their stake is, how long they have staked for, and a variety of other criteria, rather than competing with other computers to solve complicated puzzles.
The goal is to determine the amount of commitment among network participants and to reward them for it. As a result, the network becomes more decentralized and safe as the stake grows in relation to the circulating supply.
On the other hand, Proof-of-History is a technique for demonstrating that transactions are in the appropriate order and were discovered by the right person. A validator ingests transactions and forms a block in Solana’s blockchain, divided into slots. Leaders are chosen ahead of time for each slot in this method to save time.
The proof-of-stake method chooses a node (or validator) to be the “leader” of a slot based on the amount of SOL owned. Each validator keeps track of the passage of time, often known as a proof-of-history sequence, and the next block of transactions for the slot they were assigned to.
Key Features
Proof of History (PoH): PoH consensus process contributes to the network’s increased efficiency and throughput rate. As a result, having historical records of events or transactions makes it easier for the system to track transactions and the events’ order.
Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) algorithm: The BFT system acts as a safety net for the Solana ecosystem, ensuring that a single node failure does not disrupt the entire system’s operation. This approach allows the nodes to keep working despite multiple failures.
Turbine: The Turbine protocol increases data transmission to blockchain nodes by dividing the data into smaller packets. This enables Solana to handle bandwidth difficulties while increasing its total capacity to settle transactions more quickly.
Gulfstream: The Gulf Stream protocol is vital in pushing transaction caching and forwarding to the network’s edge. This allows validators to execute transactions ahead of time, resulting in speedier leader-switching and less memory burden on validators due to unconfirmed transaction pools.
Sealevel: Solana makes it possible to execute numerous smart contracts simultaneously, making it a more cost-effective blockchain network. This unique feature is known as “Sealevel.”
PipeLine: Pipelining is the technique of assigning a stream of input data to various hardware components. As a result, this approach enables transaction data to be swiftly checked and copied among the network’s nodes.
Cloudbreak: Solana employs a horizontal scaling strategy, which allows the company to expand its scalability. Cloudbreak is a database that allows you to read and write transaction data and bridges the gap between hardware and software.
Archivers: Archivers are a network of nodes and are used to store data, which is transferred from the validators. These nodes can be small and are checked periodically to verify they are storing the correct data.
What Makes Solana Different?
Solana is well-known in cryptocurrency due to its extraordinarily fast processing speeds- which has grabbed a lot of institutional attention. In addition, Solana’s hybrid protocol enables substantially faster transactions and smart contract execution validation.
Solana is a one-of-a-kind initiative in the blockchain market due to its novel blend of PoS and PoH. This hybrid consensus prioritizes speed and decentralization.
Validators are chosen through proof-of-stake on a standard blockchain. They then generate the next block of transactions and disseminate it to the rest of the network’s nodes, which compare the new block to their own ledger version. Here, nodes can decide whether or not to validate the new block.
Solana produces a chain of transactions by hashing the output of one transaction and using it as the next input. Its primary consensus mechanism is named after this history of transactions: PoH, a principle that enables better protocol scalability and usability.
Generally, a blockchain’s scalability is determined by the number of transactions per second it can accommodate. However, time differences and more throughput slow down decentralized blockchains, implying that additional nodes confirming transactions and timestamps take longer.
Solana’s design tackles this problem by selecting a single leader node based on the PoS method for message sequencing between nodes. First, the nodes must vote on the validity of blocks and transactions before they may join the chain. Next, nodes communicate their votes to the leader responsible for collecting the votes and signing off on the block.
As a result, the Solana network benefits, decreasing workload and increasing throughput despite the lack of a centralized and precise time source. Finally, as mentioned before, the Solana blockchain is dedicated to providing decentralization, security, and scalability all at once.
Solana Tokenomics
With a live market cap of $32,644,117,935 USD, CoinMarketCap now ranks #8. There are 324,932,451 SOL coins in circulation, and the maximum supply is unknown. The current Solana price is $36.23.
According to the Solana Foundation, a total of 489 million SOL tokens will be released into circulation. Approximately 260 million of these have already hit the market.
The following is the SOL token distribution: 16.23% of tokens were allocated to an initial seed sale, 12.92% to a founding sale, 12.79% to team members, and 10.46% to the Solana Foundation. The remaining tokens have already been sold in public or private transactions or are on their way to the market.
Projects Built on Solana
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular Solana projects right now
Name of the Project
Description
Raydium
Raydium is a liquidity provider and Automated Market Maker (AMM) for the Serum Decentralized Exchange, built on the Solana blockchain (DEX). Raydium has a first-mover advantage as an AMM within Serum, and it will play a crucial role in integrating new and current projects and protocols into the ecosystem.
Audius
Audius is a blockchain-based music streaming network that provides producers ultimate control over the content they create, so it’s no wonder that it’s gained a lot of traction in recent years. Prior to switching to Solana, the project was launched on the Ethereum blockchain.
Hedgehog Markets
Hedgehog is a prediction markets platform that creates passive revenue for limited partners. Here, users can hedge or trade on a variety of outcomes, including election results, sporting events, and auction selling prices
GARI Network
Chingari, one of India’s most popular social networking apps, was developed by the GARI network. GARI was founded by Chingari in order to facilitate a huge digital economy. Users will be rewarded with GARI tokens for generating and sharing viral content, as well as for tipping other users who appreciate their videos.
Star Atlas
Star Atlas is a multiplayer exploration game based on the blockchain that intends to create an open economy within its metaverse. The game will allow players to acquire ATLAS tokens simply by interacting with other players and achieving success in the game. Due to its dual economy, which employs ATLAS tokens as its main currency and POLIS tokens for governance, Star Atlas claims to be the ‘world of opportunities.’
Solana Staking System
You can help safeguard the network and earn benefits by staking your SOL tokens.
The number of tokens staked determines the amount of SOL awards. Validators handle transactions and operate the network; thus, you can stake by delegating your tokens to miners.
Delegating a stake is a shared-risk, shared-reward financial concept that could give long-term benefits to token holders. The financial incentives of token holders (delegators) and the validators to whom they delegate are aligned to achieve this.
The more stake a validator has, the more likely it is to be picked to write new transactions to the ledger. The more transactions a validator writes, the more incentives it and its delegators receive. Validators that set up their systems to process more transactions get more significant incentives due to keeping the network working as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Validators raise costs in the operation and maintenance of their systems, which are passed on to delegators as a charge calculated as a percentage of the rewards obtained. This is the commission term for the fee. Validators may compete with one another to give the lowest commission for their services because they gain greater rewards as more stake is assigned to them.
Solana and NFT
Solana has an excellent reputation for launching NFTs.
Solana is ideal for NFTs of various forms because of its fast throughput and inexpensive fees. There are over 5.7Million (and counting) NFTs in the market now, which are minted with a total market cap of 970 million with an average minted cost of $1.5.
SOL price has been climbing since the launch of the Degenerate Ape NFT collection, owing to increased developer activity in the Solana environment, increased institutional interest, the developing DeFi community, and the expansion of the NFTs and gaming vertical on Solana.
On September 9, 2021, the price of Solana reached an all-time high of $216.
Some famous Solana NFTs are Metaplex, Solanart, Solanalysis, Solsea, and more.
The Future of Solana
As the non-fungible token (NFT) craze continues to gain traction, Solana is ideally positioned to profit from it. As a result, Solana price estimates are hot on the promising outlook, as one could expect.
It combines segregated communities, dispersed attestation, and a modular weave of industry-specific modules. As a result, the project has become a behemoth that creates a faultless and dependable ecosystem, resulting in a highly collaborative and customer-friendly interface based on deep learning for both the public and private sectors.
The Solana blockchain market is expanding considerably faster, with initiatives ranging from NFT to Web3, DeFi, and many others, and is set to achieve greater benchmarks soon.
FAQs
Is Solana a Good Investment?
Yes, according to our predictions, the price of Solana will rise. At the time of writing, Solana pricing is around $36, however the average Solana price is predicted to go high. It is preferable to prepare for a long-term rise, say over a period of at least five years.
Is Solana a Ethereum-killer?
Solana’s speed, as well as its scalable ecosystem, has earned it the title of “Ethereum Killer.” In comparison to Ethereum, the cost per transaction for Solana is substantially cheaper. Unlike other applications, the software used to create Solana is more popular among developers, making development easier.
Why does Solana have a low gas fee?
Because of the longer block time and larger block size, the Solana network has an extremely cheap fee of only $0.00025 per transaction.
Today, Tulip Protocol made the announcement that they have integrated Chainlink Price Feeds in order to better secure their yield aggregating platform that is running on the Solana mainnet. The team had previously stated their intention to integrate Chainlink Price Feeds, and at this point, the connection has been completely put into action. Chainlink is the premier decentralized oracle network in the world, safeguarding tens of billions of dollars in smart contracts. It has diversified its offerings across other blockchains, notably Solana, Fantom, Polygon, BNB Chain, and others.
In a recent blog post, the team behind the Tulip Protocol explained that they had integrated Chainlink to provide users with more confidence that leveraged positions will be liquidated equitably using extremely accurate price data and that the protocol will continue to be completely collateralized at all times.
According to Tomasz Wojewoda, Head of Global Sales at Chainlink Labs:
“We’re pleased that Tulip Protocol has integrated Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana, helping secure its yield aggregation protocol with highly robust, decentralized market data. With the high-throughput performance of Solana and the strong security guarantees of the Chainlink Network, Tulip Protocol is able to empower users with a performant and secure platform.”
Tulip Protocol Seeks To Take Advantage Of Solana
Tulip Protocol brings together lenders who receive a return on their deposits and borrowers who are interested in gaining access to leverage. Users who initiate leverage positions are responsible for maintaining a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio that has been previously established. The Tulip Protocol then uses the asset price data that is provided by Chainlink Price Feeds to verify that this ratio is accurate. If the value of the collateral falls below the threshold that was established by the protocol, then their position will be immediately liquidated to assist in guaranteeing that the lenders will be repaid.
Tulip Protocol intends to capitalize on Solana by giving users the ability to more regularly reinvest their income and grow their assets without having to pay exorbitant amounts of gas expenses. Chainlink oracles can now be natively integrated on Solana, making it possible for Solana-based applications to benefit from enhanced levels of security and transparency. Yesterday, OpenOcean made the announcement that they would be integrating Chainlink Price Feeds in order to help secure the limited order functionality on many chains. These chains include Avalanche, Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, and BNB Chain.
According to Senx, Co-Founder of Tulip Protocol:
“We’re excited to be using Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana to help secure our yield aggregation platform. By leveraging the most secure and reliable on-chain data available, we’re able to provide our lenders and borrowers with greater assurances that liquidations are based on accurate price data, and the protocol will maintain a healthy loan-to-value ratio through all market conditions.”
Allowing Stakers To Benefit From Higher APYs
Natives of the blockchain as well as newcomers to the technology are beginning to understand that decentralization does not necessarily equate to a secure platform. Given that Web3 services are currently disclosing their susceptibilities to attacks from both within and outside the network, further initiatives should be undertaken to improve the safety of user assets. Fortunately, a growing number of blockchain businesses are beginning to add various levels of security to their services in order to solidify the trust of their existing customers and attract additional investors in the near and distant future.
Tulip Protocol is the very first yield aggregation platform to be built on Solana, and it features auto-compounding vault techniques. The dApp was developed to make use of Solana’s blockchain, which has a low cost and high efficiency, hence enabling the vault techniques to compound frequently. Stakeholders are able to reap the benefits of greater APYs as a result, without the need for active management.
On this week’s episode of “The Market Report,” Cointelegraph’s resident experts discuss the latest updates concerning the recent Solana (SOL) hack.
To kick things off, we broke down the latest news in the markets this week:
Bitcoin realized price bands form key resistance as bulls lose $24K, significant whale activity between $22,000 and $24,800 adds to the complexity of the current spot market setup. Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated lower on Aug. 9 after familiar resistance preserved a multi-month trading range. When will we finally break out of this price range and make the move towards $30K?
Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report, “Greater clarity” around the Merge has driven institutional inflows into Ethereum products, according to a CoinShares report. Is the ETH merge finally around the corner and will it bring new all time highs to ETH or has the price already been factored into the current price?
Circle freezes blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses, Crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics said that, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Could this mark the end for Tornado Cash or is there a way they can redeem themselves?
Next up is a new segment called “Quick Crypto Tips,” which aims to give newcomers to the crypto industry quick and easy tips to get the most out of their experience. This week’s tip: Have some funds ready to buy further downturns.
Market expert Marcel Pechman then carefully examines the Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) markets. Are the current market conditions bullish or bearish? What is the outlook for the next few months? Pechman is here to break it down. The experts also go over some markets news to bring you up to date on the latest regarding the top two cryptocurrencies.
After Marcel’s market analysis, our resident experts discuss whether your SOL is safe and the latest updates on the Solana hack. We also discuss why the network has been victim to so many hacks and downtimes. What exactly do these exploits mean for the Solana platform and if you should be worried.
Lastly, we’ve got insights from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a platform for crypto traders who want to stay one step ahead of the market. The analysts use Cointelegraph Markets Pro to identify two altcoins that stood out this week: Radicle’s RAD and DigiByte’s DGB.
Do you have a question about a coin or topic not covered here? Don’t worry. Join the YouTube chat room, and write your questions there. The person with the most interesting comment or question will be given a 1 month free subscription to markets Pro worth $100!
The Market Report streams live every Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET (4:00 pm UTC), so be sure to head on over to Cointelegraph’s YouTube page and smash those like and subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.
Singapore, Singapore , Aug. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, the ZepetoX team (ZTX, ZepetoX.io) announced its foray into the web3 space, sharing its vision to build an open world that empowers creators and communities to build, play and earn.
ZepetoX is the crypto metaverse initiative jointly incubated by ZEPETO – Asia’s largest metaverse platform with over 320 million registered users – alongside leading global blockchain organizations including Jump Crypto.
As the sole blockchain project comprehensively backed by ZEPETO, ZepetoX will have exclusive ties to ZEPETO in terms of IP including technological, design, and content assets as well as bridges to facilitate user onboarding between the two platforms. ZepetoX’s blockchain development efforts will be advised by Jump.
“ZepetoX is our official venture into the blockchain industry. We feel that web3 opportunities should be advanced through a crypto-native approach, which is why we are excited to have Jump as a contributor to developing a new platform that would have exclusive connections to ZEPETO. Overall, we believe that ZepetoX can build the ideal web3 platform to not only bring blockchain to our existing users but also to expand our footprint in the blockchain space through various disruptive initiatives,” said Daewook Kim, CEO of Naver Z – the operating entity of ZEPETO.
“We are excited to support ZepetoX’s efforts aimed at onboarding new audiences into the rapidly growing crypto space. ZEPETO’s expertise and technological know-hows accumulated over the past years from building an immersive social platform will serve as a springboard for ZepetoX,” said Saurabh Sharma, Partner at Jump Crypto.
Building on the Solana network, ZepetoX will offer a web-based 3D open world with varying levels of gamification integrated as well as opportunities for users to monetize via ownership of digital assets and social interaction. Ultimately, ZepetoX aims to empower self-expression through customizable avatars and lands that can be equipped with NFTs from a rich collection of assets created by diverse creators, DAOs, or communities.
“I am thrilled to see IP powerhouses like ZepetoX choosing to build their metaverse on Solana,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-Founder of Solana. “Projects like ZepetoX create new pathways for onboarding millions of users to web3.”
“Our global team brings a depth of crypto native experiences and our goal is to build on the foundation of ZEPETO to spearhead the adoption of blockchain among metaverse users, developers, and creators,” said co-CEO of ZepetoX, Chris Chang.
In the coming months, ZepetoX will launch its first land sale. The lands will be tradable on the ZepetoX marketplace, which will feature a variety of different NFTs as the open world project evolves. Further details on the sale will be available on the ZepetoX website in the coming weeks.
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About ZepetoX: ZepetoX (ZTX) is a web3 company building an immersive content-driven platform for users to create, trade digital assets and enjoy social interaction. Founded in 2022, ZepetoX is the blockchain initiative of ZEPETO, widely regarded as the largest Asia-based metaverse platform boasting over 320 million lifetime users with over 2.5 billion virtual fashion items sold.
