Beyond the Hype: Understanding why Solana is thriving
Solana (SOL) has emerged as a standout performer, with its price doing a 10X surge. This surge in price, particularly in the aftermath of the FTX collapse, has been remarkable. This is a story of Solana's resilience but also highlights how it survived a particularly bleak crypto winter. Let's do a deep dive into the factors driving Solana's ascent and speculate on its future.
Founded in 2017 by former Qualcomm engineer Anatoli Yakovenko, Solana's original vision was to challenge centralized financial systems. Developed by Solana Labs and overseen by the Swiss-based Solana Foundation, its mission is to serve as a decentralized counterpart to traditional stock exchanges. Over time, this vision has expanded to cover decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and crypto payments. Solana's mainnet went live in March 2020, leveraging a proof-of-stake mechanism complemented by a unique proof-of-history (PoH) technology. This combination enables Solana to process transactions at a theoretical peak of 710,000 transactions per second, a feat of engineering that positions it as one of the fastest blockchains in existence. Despite its decentralization, with nearly 2,000 validators, concerns have been raised about the centralization of transaction processing and storage.
Solana's journey has not been without its challenges. The blockchain has faced criticism for frequent outages, attributed to its prioritization of speed. The Solana ecosystem experienced a significant test with the collapse of FTX and Alameda
