Solana
sol#7Price History (USD)
Market Metrics
Supply & All-Time Highs
What is Solana?
Solana is a layer one blockchain that prioritizes high speed and low cost per transaction through Proof of History combined with Proof of Stake. Launched in 2020 by Anatoly Yakovenko, it reaches thousands of transactions per second at fees of fractions of a cent. It is one of the preferred networks for spot DEXs, consumer payments and mass-market applications.
How it works
Solana combines two consensus mechanisms to achieve its high speed. Proof of History (PoH) creates a verifiable cryptographic time sequence that orders transactions before passing them to validator consensus. Proof of Stake (PoS) selects block producers through SOL stake. The result: theoretical throughput of up to 65,000 TPS and finality in approximately 400 ms. Average fees are fractions of a cent. The trade-off is that the hardware requirements to run a full validator are high, which has generated debate about the real degree of decentralization.
Use cases
Solana has captured a significant volume of spot DEXs (Jupiter, Raydium, Phoenix), memecoins, NFTs and payment applications. Visa, Stripe and Shopify have integrated Solana rails to settle stablecoins in consumer payments. The DePIN ecosystem (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), with protocols such as Helium and Render, has found in Solana suitable technical ground thanks to its low fees. The SOL token is used for gas, staking and informal protocol governance.
Post-FTX recovery
After the collapse of FTX at the end of 2022, Solana suffered badly because Sam Bankman-Fried was one of its main backers and FTX/Alameda concentrated a significant volume of SOL in staking. The network staged a notable recovery during 2023-2025 with growth in real usage, improved stability (resolution of the outage problems that affected the network in 2022) and the entry of institutional capital. The approval of spot SOL ETFs in 2025 marked the asset's institutional consolidation.
Frequently asked questions
What is Solana?
Solana is a layer one blockchain launched in 2020 by Anatoly Yakovenko and a team partly formed by Qualcomm engineers. It combines Proof of History with Proof of Stake to reach throughput of up to 65,000 transactions per second and finality in under half a second, at fees of fractions of a cent.
How does Solana differ from Ethereum?
Solana prioritizes speed and low cost over maximizing decentralization. It offers much greater throughput (65,000 theoretical TPS vs ~15 TPS on Ethereum L1) and fees of fractions of a cent, but requires more expensive hardware for validators, which limits the number of operators. Ethereum prioritizes decentralization and security, scaling via Layer 2. They are philosophically distinct architectures.
Does Solana have a spot ETF?
Yes. The US SEC approved the first spot Solana ETFs in 2025, which marked the asset's institutional consolidation after the post-FTX recovery cycle. The leading issuers (BlackRock, Fidelity, VanEck) launched products within months of the approval.
What is SOL used for?
SOL has three main uses: paying transaction fees (gas) on the Solana network, staking to validate and secure the network while earning rewards in SOL (yield of approximately 6-7% annually), and participating in the protocol's informal governance. Some corporate treasuries have begun to add SOL as a productive asset complementing BTC.
Data via CoinGecko API · Revalidated every 60s · Historical chart in USD