SOLANA ECOSYSTEM and its dynamism in recent times

Solana is a decentralized blockchain-based computing platform that uses SOL (its

native token) to pay for transactions. In 2017, a former executive at Qualcomm named
Anatoly Yakovenko created Solana to achieve what popular block-chains will achieve
but at the same time keep costs low. Solana is emerging as a low-cost, high-speed
competitor to others with yet unmatched transaction throughput. Currently, Solana is
capable of 710,000 TPS (transaction per second) without any scaling issues and this is
mainly a result of the innovative hybrid consensus model that combines a unique
proof-of-history (PoH) algorithm with the lightning-fast synchronization engine
which is a version of proof-of-stake (PoS) making it the world’s fastest blockchain.
These qualities are reasons why both veteran developers and beginners looking to
experiment with smart contracts and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would consider
using the Solana network.

Solana block-chain was rolled out during the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) boom.
The project’s internal testnet was released in 2018, followed by multiple testnet
phases leading to the eventual official launch of the main network in 2020. SOL has a
total supply of 506 million with about 60% already in circulation. SOL currently
ranks in the top 10 cryptocurrencies with a price of $150 per token with more than
$45 billion in market capitalization. Solana’s DeFi based projects crossed the $4
billion mark in October 2021, reaching another milestone. Solana has become
popular in recent months due to its extensive scalability and mining efficiency, which
has made many people conclude that it will be the future leader of the DeFi landscape.

The Solana ecosystem refers to a suite of technologies that work in synergy with the
protocol to boost its speed and scalability, and to a collection of apps that are built on
Solana’s open infrastructure. The ecosystem currently hosts about 500 dapps and there
is a very high tendency that this number would be on a steady rise due to the
network’s massive growth. Ethereum experienced network congestion that led to high
gas fees and this drove a lot of people to Solana’s lightning-fast layer-1 solution.
Thanks to its average transaction cost of $0.00025 and 429-millisecond block finality.
Solana’s consensus mechanism is unique compared to Bitcoin’s proof of work or
Cardano’s proof-of=stake models. Solana’s PoS consensus model is reinforced by
Tower BFT (Byzantine fault tolerance), another one of Solana’s eight-core
innovations. A crucial element of the ecosystem is Sea Level, Solana’s transaction
parallelization system that enables parallel smart contract runtime. Sealevel optimizes
the network’s resource usage and allows for horizontal scalability across graphics
processing units (GPUs) and solid-state drives (SSDs).

Over the years, numerous leading blockchain and crypto projects are leveraging
Solana’s open protocol and they are DeFi (Serum, Raydiu and ,Mango Markets),
Wallets (Phantom, Solflare and Sollet), Stable coins (USDT and USDC), NFTs
(Solanart and Solsea), Games (Star Atlas and Aurory). In conclusion, Solana has
come a long way since its mainnet launch in March 2020 and has attracted numerous
projects to the ecosystem thanks to its scalability, sub-penny fees and high landscape.