Solana Blockchain

According to Solona themselves, eight key innovations make the Solana network possible:

Proof of History (POH) — a clock before consensus;
Tower BFT — a PoH-optimized version of PBFT;
Turbine — a block propagation protocol;
Gulf Stream — Mempool-less transaction forwarding protocol;
Sealevel — Parallel smart contracts run-time;
Pipelining — a Transaction Processing Unit for validation optimization
Cloudbreak — Horizontally-Scaled Accounts Database; and
Archivers — Distributed ledger store

With these invitations, Solana claims to have solved the blockchain trilemma; they say the blockchain is secure, fast, and decentralized. The Solana network is theoretically designed to reach 710,000 transactions per second and have 100-millisecond block times but has only reached 65,000 transactions per second and 400-millisecond block times. These speeds make it the fastest blockchain in existence.

One of the biggest arguments to Solana’s claim of solving the blockchain trilemma is its decentralization. So far, the number of validators on the blockchain is low and has caused concern. One reason that can be drawn from the low number of validators is the high cost of hardware required to become one. 

The video below gives a good look at the pros and cons of Solana.

It’s quickly looking like Solana is becoming the chain of airdrops. 

More and more projects are starting on SOL and are releasing airdrops. This increase in activity is due to the super low gas fees, and high transaction speeds the chain offers. As a result, there are literally hundreds of airdrops happening each week on Solana. If you are interested in these airdrops, I suggest looking at Twitter user Crypto_world1 for regular SOL airdrops updates.

The only drawback about these airdrops is that most are coming from small projects with little to no value in each coin.

The number of airdrops that are on Solana is insane, and it will be fun to see if any of these coins actually materialize and be worth something.