Mrs Saira

Solana Labs was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko in 2017.
👤 Main Founder:
Anatoly Yakovenko – A former engineer at Qualcomm.
He introduced the concept of Proof of History (PoH), which became the core innovation behind Solana.
👥 Co-Founders:
Greg Fitzgerald** Raj Gokal Stephen Akridge

The project officially launched its mainnet in 2020, and today Solana is one of the leading high-performance Layer 1 blockchains supporting decentralized applications (dApps) and crypto projects.

Solana is a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain designed to support decentralized applications (dApps), cryptocurrencies, and Web3 projects at massive scale. Launched in March 2020, Solana quickly became known for its exceptional transaction speed and extremely low fees compared to many other blockchain networks. It was founded in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former Qualcomm engineer who aimed to solve the scalability limitations faced by earlier blockchains.
One of Solana’s biggest innovations is its unique consensus mechanism called Proof of History (PoH). Unlike traditional blockchains that rely only on Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, Solana combines Proof of History with Proof of Stake. Proof of History acts as a cryptographic clock, allowing the network to timestamp transactions before they are confirmed. This significantly increases processing efficiency and enables the network to handle thousands of transactions per second (TPS). As a result, Solana can process far more transactions than many competing networks while maintaining low costs.

The native cryptocurrency of the Solana network is SOL. SOL is used to pay transaction fees, participate in staking, and help secure the network. Users can stake SOL tokens to validators in exchange for rewards, making the network more decentralized and secure. Low transaction costs—often just a fraction of a dollar—have made Solana especially attractive for developers building decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, NFT marketplaces, blockchain games, and meme coin ecosystems.
Solana experienced massive growth during the 2021 cryptocurrency bull market. Many projects migrated to or launched on Solana because of its scalability and lower fees compared to Ethereum. Popular NFT collections and DeFi protocols contributed to increased adoption and higher SOL prices. However, in 2022, the collapse of FTX significantly impacted Solana’s ecosystem because of their close association. The SOL price dropped sharply, and confidence temporarily declined.
Despite these challenges, Solana demonstrated resilience. The developer community continued building, network upgrades improved stability, and new applications entered the ecosystem. By 2023–2025, Solana regained attention through meme coin activity, innovative DeFi platforms, and high-performance blockchain gaming projects. Improvements in validator infrastructure and network reliability further strengthened its position in the crypto market.
Today, Solana is considered one of the top blockchain platforms globally. Its focus on speed, scalability, and affordability makes it appealing for both retail users and institutional developers. While competition among Layer-1 blockchains remains strong, Solana’s technological foundation and active ecosystem continue to drive growth.

Satoshi Nakamoto
satoshin@gmx.com
www.bitcoin.org

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network.The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.
Introduction
Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services.
Transactions
We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures. Each owner transfers the coin to the next by digitally signing a hash of the previous transaction and the public key of the next owner and adding these to the end of the coin. A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownerships.

Timestamp Server
The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server. A timestamp server works by taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped . The timestamp proves that the data must have existed at thetime, obviously, in order to get into the hash. Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before it.

Proof-of-Work
For our timestamp network, we implement the proof-of-work by incrementing a nonce in the block until a value is found that gives the block's hash the required zero bits. Once the CPU effort has been expended to make it satisfy the proof-of-work, the block cannot be changed without redoing the work.

Network
The steps to run the network are as follows:
1) New transactions are broadcast to all nodes.
2) Each node collects new transactions into a block.
3) Each node works on finding a difficult proof-of-work for its block.
4) When a node finds a proof-of-work, it broadcasts the block to all nodes.
5) Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent.
Incentive
The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation.
Simplified Payment Verification

Combining and Splitting Value

Privacy

Calculations
The race between the honest chain and an attacker chain can be characterized as a Binomial Random Walk. The success event is the honest chain being extended by one block, increasing its lead by +1, and the failure event is the attacker's chain being extended by one block, reducing the gap by -1.The probability of an attacker catching up from a given deficit is analogous to a Gambler's Ruin problem. Suppose a gambler with unlimited credit starts at a deficit and plays potentially an infinite number of trials to try to reach breakeven. We can calculate the probability he ever reaches breakeven, or that an attacker ever catches up with the honest chain.
p = probability an honest node finds the next block
q = probability the attacker finds the next block
qz = probability the attacker will ever catch up from z blocks behind.

Conclusion
We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust. We started with the usual framework of coins made from digital signatures, which provides strong control of ownership, but is incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending. To solve this, we proposed a peer-to-peer network using proof-of-work to record a public history of transactions that quickly becomes computationally impractical for an attacker to change if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power