Solana explained in plain English.

What is Solana?

Solana is a faster and a better version of Ethereum.

Solana has a block time of 400 milliseconds. Very fast. Ethereum’s 10 seconds and bitcoins 10 min. Solana actually can handle 710000 transactions/second. It is like 30 times the amount of transactions a visa handles. Visa can do 23666 transactions per second.

It’s fast. Monstrous. Cheap. And comparable with the Matic network.

What makes Solana so fast and so cheap?

It’s their consensus system. It’s a fancy way of saying how everyone agrees on how the blockchain should be. It does not use proof of work, and they don’t exactly use proof of stake. They use proof of history. Very first of its type.

It’s proof of stake but adds the variable of time in it. So, proof of history is not a consensus system but is a way of integrating time into the blockchain data. Solana uses something called timestamps. It stamps a specific time and date on the blocks. They do this because it allows them for brisk sequencing validators. So they know their order without having to communicate back and forth.

A problem that other blockchains face is that they have to agree on the time. On other blockchains or the nodes (that means computers on the network) have to chat back and forth to agree on a time. They have to do it before submitting a block. In the computer realm, this chat can take a lot of time.

Solana fixes this using proof of history. To have everyone have timestamps on their block and use a cryptographic proof so that they don’t have to wait for everyone to agree on a time. We can agree on the organization of the date on the blocks. Waiting period for others.

Proof of history allows nodes to keep throwing up a bunch of blocks at us. Since some people have faster internet than others, we can assume that they tell the truth about their sending dates. We then organize them after. We get them, check them, verify them and then add them to the blockchain.

Another fact. Solana has 25 different people validating 25 blocks at once. That’s how they can surpass visas.

How is it similar to the proof of stake?

There is no requirement to be a validator. To become a validator on the Ethereum blockchain, you need to own 32 Ethereum. But on the Solana network, you need a small amount of Solana and a fee.

There is a catch. The voting fee is very high, one Solana per day.

Sea level.

It is a new term to say that validators can run a smart contract code in parallel. For you, the non-developer friend of mine, we sail in the same boat. Let me explain it to you in plain English.

Assume you have to do homework, text a friend, and watch Netflix. As a human, you have to do each task separately in order. In a series.

Now in the case of Solana, you can do all of these three tasks at once. It’s like having two more copies of yourself and doing the work all at the same time. A parallel way. Solana operates in a parallel way. Solana says: They are limited by the hardware capacity and not by the operating system.

Why is everyone using Solana for smart contract projects instead of Ethereum?

The reason being Solana has vastly different smart contracts on offer than Solana.

Ethereum uses a virtual machine system to run its code, but Solana uses the Rust programming language. Rust is a very low-level and easy language to use. It’s much more powerful. Although, it requires more work to do things.

Another fact: The Solana token has an initial supply of 500 million tokens, and it will keep increasing due to the proof of stake rewards.