In this Solana Blockchain Overview, we explore how Solana stands out as a leader in speed, thanks to its high transaction throughput and low fees. Unlike traditional blockchains like Bitcoin, which process blocks sequentially, Solana processes transactions in parallel, allowing it to handle thousands of transactions per second (TPS). This architecture, optimized for large-scale dApps, leads to faster confirmation times, making it ideal for use cases that require quick settlements.
At the core of Solana’s efficiency is its combination of unique features, such as its consensus mechanism, Proof of History (PoH), combined with Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). These features enable fast data propagation and validation while keeping fees low and transaction times short.
The Fastest Smart Contract-Supporting Blockchain
Solana is one of the fastest blockchains supporting smart contracts, with actual user-driven transactions reaching around 1,000 TPS in practice, and potentially up to 65,000 TPS, which includes validator coordination messages. Even at 1,000 TPS, Solana outpaces most other platforms. A more accurate performance metric, especially for DeFi, is swaps per second (SPS), which measures complex operations like token swaps, offering a clearer view of real-world capabilities. Additionally, Solana’s high throughput enables transaction fees as low as $0.00025, making it more cost-effective than many other blockchains
Solana’s Main Features
- Proof of History: PoH serves as a cryptographic clock, timestamping transactions to establish a verifiable sequence without requiring constant communication between nodes. By generating a sequential chain of cryptographic proofs (Verifiable Delay Function), validators can independently verify the order of transactions. This reduces communication overhead, enabling high throughput and low latency, making Solana scalable for decentralized applications.
- Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance: Built on PoH, this consensus algorithm allows validators to reach agreement with minimal communication, improving efficiency compared to traditional BFT models.
- Sealevel: Solana’s parallel processing engine enables multiple smart contracts to run concurrently, significantly increasing throughput. By structuring transactions to specify which accounts they will interact with, Sealevel prevents conflicts and allows non-overlapping transactions to execute in parallel, leveraging multi-core processors and optimizing resources with SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data).
- Gulf Stream: This system pushes transaction validation to the network’s edge, reducing confirmation times and improving scalability by allowing transactions to be pre-executed.
- Turbine: A protocol that splits blocks into smaller packets for faster transmission across the network, reducing latency and improving block confirmation speed.
We have been focusing on Solana’s existing architecture, but what about its future?
Firedancer is a relatively new development and has not yet been fully integrated into Solana’s architecture. Solana’s primary client, developed by Solana Labs and written in Rust, remains the core client in widespread use. Firedancer is an alternative validator client that is still under active development and testing, although it has shown promising performance improvements. Its introduction is aimed at increasing validator diversity and improving scalability beyond current limits. But Firedancer is not yet fully operational on the Solana mainnet.
Firedancer is a new high-performance validator client being developed for Solana by Jump Crypto. It is designed to optimize Solana’s transaction processing capabilities, potentially reaching over 1 million transactions per second (TPS) per tile on CPU cores. Unlike Solana’s main client, which is written in Rust, Firedancer is developed in C++ and uses a modular architecture that divides the validator workload into independent processes called tiles. This design improves reliability, allowing for upgrades without downtime and better hardware resource utilization. Firedancer also enhances security by creating a more diverse validator ecosystem, reducing the risk of single points of failure in the network.
Solana Tokenomics
Solana’s tokenomics involve the utility and distribution of its native token, SOL. Key aspects include:
- Utility: SOL is primarily used for paying transaction fees and staking to support network security. Additionally, SOL is involved in governance as the network grows, where token holders can participate in decision-making processes.
- Supply: Solana has a total capped supply of 489 million SOL tokens. However, it started with an inflationary model. The network introduces a decreasing inflation rate starting at 8% annually, which reduces over time.
- Staking Rewards: Validators and delegators can earn SOL by staking their tokens, helping to secure the network. The staking rewards come from both transaction fees and the inflationary issuance of SOL.
How does Solana achieve high throughput and low latency?
Solana achieves its high throughput and low latency primarily through a combination of Proof of History and the Sealevel runtime. PoH acts as a clock, timestamping transactions to create a verifiable order before consensus is reached. This allows the system to minimize the overhead associated with traditional message exchanges between nodes, resulting in faster transaction processing. Additionally, Sealevel enables parallel transaction processing, allowing multiple smart contracts and transactions to execute simultaneously on available cores, further boosting throughput and reducing delays.
How does PoH order transactions before consensus?
PoH is a Verifiable Delay Function that works by continuously hashing transactions using SHA-256, with each output acting as the input for the next step. This sequential process creates a verifiable timeline of events, ensuring that all nodes have a synchronized view of the order in which transactions were made, independent of external validators. This reduces communication overhead during consensus, as validators can trust the timestamping done by PoH. It essentially pre-orders transactions, making the final consensus process much faster.
Why does TBFT ensure fast and secure validation?
Solana’s Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance is a specialized version of the classic PBFT. By using PoH as a global clock, Tower BFT significantly reduces the amount of communication required between validators during consensus. Instead of extensive voting rounds, validators reference PoH timestamps to cast votes, dramatically speeding up the decision-making process. Validators can vote on the network state with minimal overhead, while maintaining security by ensuring consensus even in the presence of faulty or malicious nodes.
How does Solana process many transactions at the same time?
Solana’s Sealevel runtime allows it to process multiple transactions in parallel by leveraging multi-core processors. When transactions are submitted, they include a list of all the accounts they will read or modify. Transactions that don’t overlap in terms of the accounts they affect can be processed concurrently. This design enables the network to execute thousands of transactions at once, a significant improvement over single-threaded models seen in other blockchains like Ethereum.
Solana’s architecture is built to achieve high throughput and low latency. Its Proof of History (PoH) provides a verifiable sequence of time, allowing transactions to be ordered before consensus. Combined with Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), it ensures fast and secure validation across the network. Solana also employs parallel processing of transactions, allowing many to be processed concurrently, therefore increasing efficiency.
