Solana Blockchain

Solana is a cryptocurrency that made its introduction in the market quite recently. It’s an open source project that uses the framework of blockchain technology to create DeFi solutions. Solano has been in the news recently for a variety of reasons. One of them is that Solana’s price has risen to almost $208 from a low of $1.5. Solana has surpassed a market capitalization of $61 billion since January.

So exactly what is Solana?

Solana is basically a blockchain platform that is focused on developing Decentralized applications. The project is maintained by the Solana Foundation based in Geneva. They are completely open source. The blockchain has been built by the developers at the Solana Labs which is situated in San Francisco.
Solana is a tough competitor of Ethereum, which is the second largest cryptocurrency in the world. It promises faster operations at a relatively low cost. Solana is basically a Proof of stake blockchain (POS) which is beneficial for the environment as compared to the Proof of Work (POW) blockchain. The native cryptocurrency of Solana goes by the same name, and is available under the tickr called SOL.
In this context, it is important to reflect on what makes a POS blockchain so important. In a decentralized system of Blockchain, a lot of nodes or computers are required to validate the transactions that are being carried out on the platform. In this scenario, someone can add a bunch of nodes in order to gain control of the platform or the network itself. A way of avoiding this nuisance is by simply making sure that the computers can efficiently operate harder mathematical problems. Even though it’s pretty effective, it is also true that the network does consume enormous amounts of electricity.
There is another way to get this done and it is by making the nodes of the validator stake something valuable. In case of Solana, what they need to stake are the SOL tokens, and even though the validators on this network consume power, the percentage of consumption is way lesser than what the Bitcoin miners consume, for instance.