Solana has been in the news since its token, SOL, rose from $30 in July 2021 to more than $250 in November 2021. Since then, Solana has experienced several technical issues, the most dramatic one halting the network in January 2022 and forcing many traders into liquidation. At the same time, the token has plummeted to $70 / $80 but has begun to rise again in recent weeks.
There’s been a lot of buzz around Solana’s Proof-of-History concept, but few real explanations of how it allows Solana to be a high tps (transactions per second) blockchain, processing in theory up to 50,000 tps (at the time of writing, the real use of Solana is closer to 5,000 tps.) So it’s time to understand how Solana really works.
note: this is a dive into Solana’s tech, not a general note on Solana, which will come at a later time.
Proof-of-History: a cryptographic clock
Solana is a blockchain that is optimized for very high TPS on the base layer, that is without sharding or layer 2 solutions such as rollups. To achieve this high throughput, Solana has optimized every step of the block production and validation, and these optimizations are made possible by Solana’s highly publicized Proof-of-History (PoH).
