#1 — What is Solana?
#2 — What are the benefits of Solana in blockchain development?
#3 — What makes Solana unique?
#4 — What can be built on Solana?
#5 — What programming language does Solana use?
#6 — What is a major benefit for developers on Solana?
#7 — How much do Solana developers make?
#8 — What should a Solana developer learn?
#9 — How can I learn Solana development?
Modern blockchain projects have an essential advantage — their developers can turn the mistakes of their predecessors into virtues. That's exactly what the Solana platform team has done. This article will explain what Solana's programming language is and what the major benefits for developers on Solana are.
#1 — What is Solana?
Solana is a decentralized smart contract platform. Its main task is solving the scaling problems of existing blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. It supports the development of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and its native token is SOL.
Developers have drawn attention to the low bandwidth of most blockchains, which leads to higher transaction costs and slower transaction speeds. The scalability problems of large blockchains negatively affect the capabilities of projects built on them. Because of this, according to Solana developers, the entire cryptocurrency market suffers.
The solution to the problem is a next-generation programmable blockchain. According to them, the project's blockchain differs from the competitors because of its high speed and low fees.
Solana's developers claim that the platform and its ecosystem are capable of scaling to match their growth rate and are resistant to censorship. Thanks to the project's advantages, its team plans to become more popular than other blockchains for dApps development.
#2 — What are the benefits of Solana in blockchain development?
There is a blockchain trilemma that is being discussed extensively in the world today. It is a set of three fundamental problems — decentralization, security, and scalability. Developers face them when creating blockchains, forcing them to eventually sacrifice one aspect as a compromise to improve the others.
And Solana blockchain solves this trilemma thanks to significant advantages:
- Fast Transaction Speeds. Solana supports at least 50,000 TPS. This is about 3800 times faster than Ethereum and 10 000 times faster than Bitcoin.
- Proof of History (PoH). It increases the throughput of networks. PoH synchronizes nodes, which increases blockchain speed.
- Low Costs. Solana’s average fee is $0.00025, while Bitcoin is $1.37 and Ethereum is $2.56.
- Environmentally Friendly Option. As the Solana network uses Proof-of-Stake (PoS), there are no miners. As a result, this blockchain doesn't harm the environment.
- Security. The Solana blockchain is very secure and for example, is not vulnerable to the mass exit problem.
This is why many developers are looking for a Solana development course.
#3 — What makes Solana unique?
PoH makes Solana unique. Proof-of-History is another consensus mechanism based on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) concept. It sets a single time in the Solana blockchain without resorting to complex calculations, as in Bitcoin or Ethereum. This enables nodes to validate transactions much faster, increasing network throughput. As a result of using PoH, the blockchain becomes extremely fast and guarantees its security in a decentralized manner.
Let's draw a parallel from life to understand how Proof of History speeds up the network.
Imagine that an employee has a time tracker that records the beginning of work, breaks, and the end of their work. So every time the worker leaves the workplace, the software makes a note.
So a supervisor comes to the worker and tells him he went home early yesterday. "That's not true," the worker says and shows the proof-of-time tracker marks.
Does the supervisor believe him? Absolutely, because the software made the time stamp. Does the manager need to ask his colleagues in the office if the employee went home at 6 p.m.? No, the program won't lie.
It's the same on the network. We don't need a validators' confirmation of any event (transaction) like in Proof of Stake. After all, the Solana blockchain records a sequence of transactions on an internal clock. All network members can trust this record thanks to the transaction's fixation on timestamps.
What is also essential is that transactions are recorded sequentially. Transaction A happens first, then transaction B, and then transaction C. The consensus mechanism will not change their order because it could damage the entire blockchain and effect security.
Again, the PoH mechanism is trustworthy and secure, so people don't need to be involved in reconciling transactions. This is what makes the blockchain work faster.
In addition to Proof-of-History, Solana's uniqueness is provided by several additional tools:
- Tower BFT. This algorithm uses PoH as a cryptographic clock to help it reach consensus without having to send a stream of messages between nodes.
- Gulf Stream. A technical solution to reduce the pool of unconfirmed transactions. Gulf Stream allows the platform to perform 50,000 transactions per second.
- Turbine. The tool "packs" the data that needs to be transferred between network nodes into smaller "packets". So, the Turbine helps the network increase bandwidth and speed up transaction processing.
- Sealevel. An engine that allows a network to process multiple transactions in parallel.
- Pipelining. A tool for optimizing input data processing to increase network speed.
- Cloudbreak. Account database. The tool optimizes parallel data reading processes and enables them to be written to SSD drives.
- Archivers. Distributed registry data storage. So-called archivers handle data storage in the project. However, they do not participate in the process of reaching consensus by the cryptocurrency network.
Now you understand why Solana is such a unique platform. Let’s find out what Solana is used for.
#4 — What can be built on Solana?
Almost anything in the crypto world can be built on Solana, for example:
- Cryptocurrency
- Smart contracts
- NFT
- DeFi
- Corporate solutions
Thanks to the ability to create almost anything, Solana already has a well-developed and rapidly growing ecosystem of dApps. Solana currently includes some of the most popular apps:
- O3Swap. A cross-chain liquidity aggregator compatible with Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, NEO, and Huobi Eco.
- SolStarter. An IDO launchpad for projects built on Solana.
- Arweave. A decentralized storage protocol that offers persistent file storage.
- Oxygen. DeFi's core broker protocol, which allows users to benefit from their unused assets.
Solana is an excellent platform for dApps development, and Solana programmers are highly valued. They build cutting-edge Web 3.0 applications on Solana.
