I call myself a newbie in crypto world. As Crypto World is so huge and understanding it takes time. I am still learning and will continue to learn. Other than my BCH holding, I want to try more coins to invest in. Two of my friends @mariteen and @UMAIr620 are in Crypto Market for more than 6 years now. As they are experience traders now, I asked them if it is Ok to invest in Cardano (ADA) or MATIC? And to my surprise they said "Take entry in MATIC at $0.05-0.2 😳 (current price is $1.05) will it come to this down? Anyways, for ADA they said the best entry will be $0.1-0.2 😳 current price is $1.24. I don't know if they come this down or not. After sometime he talked about Solana.

To my curious I checked Solana and it is currently at $29.26 at the time of writing this. The best entry will be according to him:

Anyways, this was just his assumptions. I really don't know if it will come this down. Who knows! After this discussion I started reading about Solana. After reading more than half of dozen article and watching multiple videos, I gather some information. And I am here to write so that anyone here who is thinking to invest in Solana can have this information too. Let's get started.

Ethereum Killer

There are many blockchains claiming to be the Ethereum killers. And it's a fairly long list- Cardano, Cosmos, Polkadot and Tron. But today we are going to discuss one particular Ethereum killer project and that project is Solana.

Solana

It is backed by founders of a popular Crypto exchange FTX. One of the founder of FTx Sam Bankman. He is one of the world's youngest Crypto billionaire. They reviewed hundreds of the projects and picked to back Solana because of how fast it is. Recently solana been in the news because it raised 314 million dollars. One of the leading teams in the fundraise was A16z (one of the worlds most popular venture capital firms). Solana recently concluded a global hackathon inviting teams from around the world to participate in.

Technology

Many people think that the tech behind Solana is an Ethereum killer. (Even though personally I don't believe that Ethereum is going to die. LoL). Solana's tech is definitely worth having a look at like let's compared to some stats.

• Transaction Per Second

While Ethereum can do 15 transaction per second, it's competitors like Polkadot and Tron can do 1000 transaction per second. But Solana can do 65000 transaction per second which is pretty much higher than the BCH too.

• Transaction Fee

We already know that Ethereum gas is a little bit a problem. Sometimes the fees are as high as $15 to $30 for one transaction. Meanwhile its competitors like a Polkadot take around $1. But Solana 's transaction fee is as low as $0.0015. Which is again pretty much similar than that of BCH.

Solana claims to be the most performant permissionless blockchain in the world. And it managed to achieve this through several new technologies which are considered a breakthrough in blockchain tech. Ethereum developers are in know that they are little slow and a little expensive. And they are solving that through sharding, proof-of-stake and layer 2 solution. But Solana uses completely different technology called proof-of-history. And the team that has built it includes former employees from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel--- you name it.

To understand Solana's Tech we have to understand the blockchain, scalability Trilemma.

• Picture link.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had named the term Blockchain Trilemma. The idea is that there are three desirable qualities of any blockchain: Decentralization-Security-Scalability. Trilemma claims that only two of these qualities can be maximized. And usually it's at the expense of the third. Which means you could have extremely high security, be decentralized but you would have to compromise on scalability. Or you could have high security and high scalability but you will be compromising on being decentralized.

Solana claims that it has actually solved the blockchain trilemma. Which means it is highly decentralized, very secure and it is very scalable. But how does it achieve this insanity? The answer is Proof-Of-History. Before going to Proof Of History, let's have a relook at Proof Of Work and Proof Of Stake.

• Proof Of Work

In proof of work many computers from around The World fight against each other in order to be able to compute the next hash. The most powerful computer of them wins the race. This mechanism results in very low transaction per second and higher time to add new blocks. For example Bitcoin takes 10 minutes to add new block.

• Proof Of Stake

In proof of stake instead of all computer fighting each other, there is a lucky draw. Any computer can be chosen to validate other transaction. And it depends on the amount of ether that they have staked. Although this technology increased the number of transaction for second but this didn't affect the time to add new blocks. For example Ether goes from 15 second to only 12 second but this is not a significant change. The reason behind this is Time Keeping or Timestamps.

Proof Of History

Problem of timestamp is solved by Solana by using Proof Of History. Decentralized world works because we eliminate the need to trust any party using cryptography. Same idea can be applied to timekeeping too. Using cryptography we can create a proof of passage of time a.k.a Proof Of History. By using simple entropy logic we can arrange all time points in a sequence. Proof of history uses a mathematical function which takes 0.4 seconds to give results. So we know every block in a proof of history blockchain is 0.4 seconds apart.

Proof of history is not the only thing which makes Solana different, it has other differentiating features as well.

• Scalability

Solana is very fast. It is very fastest blockchain. But in case, that wasn't enough, Solana actually cracked a hack by which they can keep getting faster without changing anything. They have done it by Moore's Law. It states that: every couple of years number of transistors in a circuit will double. Solana is designed to exploit this idea. Solana parallelly runs process in our GPU cores. Which means if the number of cores in GPU keeps doubling every year, Solana will keep getting faster and faster.

• Speed

Solana is only blockchain today that has transactional capacity comparable to the internet that we know as of today. The speed of Solana as we know is 0.4 seconds to add new block.

• Validators

Solana currently has around 600 validators. Which is the very less than Ethereum's 11,000 validators. Ethereum is more than 4 years old now. But Solana is new. You need to stake 32 Ether to be a validator but on Solana there is not a specific number. Anyone can be a validator.

There are many other specifications in which Solana stands out. For example:

• Finality Time

• De-fi

• Ethereum Bridge

• USDC and USDT adoption to Solana

Sol token has 270 million circulating supply out of 500 million total supply. Serum is another token made on Solana blockchain.

That's it for today guys. I am thinking to invest in Solana but waiting for a better entry. If you too want to invest then first do your own research. Always DYOR. If you like this article then:

Thanks.