L7 - Base & Adv.
Solana is a blockchain platform designed to host decentralized, scalable applications. It was founded in 2017 as an open-source project by the Solana Foundation in Geneva, with the blockchain built by the San Francisco-based Solana Labs. Solana is much faster in terms of transaction processing capacity and has significantly lower transaction fees than rival blockchains such as Ethereum. Solana offers exponentially faster transaction speeds than its closest competitors, Ethereum and Cardano (ADA), at a fraction of the cost, according to Anissimov, by using a unique blend of proof of history and delegated proof of stake. Unlike proof of work, which uses miners to define the next block in a chain, or proof of stake, which uses staked tokens to define the next block, proof of history defines blocks for the Solana chain using timestamps. This novel system allows blockchain validators to vote on the timestamps of different blocks in the chain. This keeps the chain decentralized while also allowing for faster, more secure computations.