Overview
Solana is an independent blockchain platform that is completely designed from scratch to achieve a high degree of scalability. Solana will use Proof of Stake as the consensus mechanism. Solana developed a Proof of History (PoH) architecture for scaling its platform. Proof of History is used to verify order and passage of time between events.
Solana aims to achieve scalability without sharding. The Solana blockchain will support smart contract functionality. Developers can build on Solana as a substitute to other smart contract platforms such as Ethereum.
How advanced is the project?
In terms of community management Solana counts with an active Telegram Group and a Subreddit. In terms of technical development Solana claims to have a multinode testnet running which is able to perform 250,000 TPS (transactions per second). Note that Ethereum currently operates at 15 TPS, but plans to increase this to several hundred thousand TPS in the near future. The main net is planned to go live in Q4 2018. No private investors and advisors were announced so far. The date of the presale is not yet announced neither.
What are the tokens used for and how can the token value appreciate?
Since the Solana network is serving a similar purpose as the Ethereum network the token behaviour will be comparable to Ethereum. As more decentralized applications (dApps) are build on Solana and more users are using these dApps, more demand for the network will arise and hence the value of the Solana token will appreciate.
Team & Advisors
Anatoly Yakovenko is the founder and CEO of Solana. He counts with previous experience as a senior engineer at Qualcomm, Mesophere and Dropbox.
Greg Fitzgerald is the principal architect and CTO of Solana. He previously served in the Office of the Chief Scientist at Qualcomm.
Raj Gokal is the COO of Solana and is responsible for product management, operations and finance. He counts with more than ten years of experience in product management and finance roles and founded previously a company in the consumer medical devices field.
Beyond the executive level the Solana team counts with another five experienced engineers and one person responsible for business development. No advisors were publicly announced.
Product
Solana achieves the high degree of scalability through the Proof of History and its Avalanche communication design. Avalanche in this context describes a way for organizing the data flow. Through Avalanche Solana claims to scale logarithmically in relation to the number of nodes that are on the network. Solana aims to achieve more than 700,000 TPS after the main net is launched.
Solidity and JavaScript will be the first languages that developers can use to interact with the Solana smart contract platform. However, Solana plans to support a wide range of popular programming languages in the near future.
Since Solana distinguishes itself from other blockchain platforms by the high transaction speed the team believes it will be ideally suited to host decentralized exchanges, prediction markets and payment platforms.
Strength and Opportunities
The team behind Solana counts with solid experiences and holds various patents.
Proof of History represents a novel architecture that may bring improvements but at the same time the design has not been tested extensively as it is the case for the architecture of other blockchains where the mainnet is live already for years.
Weaknesses and Threats
Solana is not yet fully consolidated since no advisors and private investors were announced. However, Solana may announce these details in the upcoming weeks.
Solana essentially is a competitor of Ethereum, EOS, Neo and other smart contract platforms, since the solutions that are planned to run on Solana are identical to the projects that are already running on Ethereum, such as Augur. Solana claims to deliver a higher scalability, but while the Solana team is developing its mainnet other projects are working hard to improve their scalability. It will be difficult to catch up to the current market leaders and attract the interest of developers to build on Solana unless the platform can deliver a scalability that is significantly better compared to all the other smart contract platforms.
Verdict
We can expect Solana to disclose a range of advisors and private investors in the near future. Solana definitely is an interesting project to watch and counts with a skilled team. The vision of Solana is very ambitious. The next months should bring more clarity on the project and Solana may receive additional validation by announcing various private investors.
Our Rating: B+
? URL: https://solana.com/
? TG: https://t.me/solanaio
* The information contained in this article is for education purpose only and not financial advice. Do your own research before making any investment decisions.
(2 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
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