PoH involves timestamping transactions when they are added to a Solana block. Rather, it is a component in Solana’s Proof of Stake consensus. Let us start with a term you may have heard if you have looked at the project before: Proof of History (PoH). In addition to being based on similar database technologies used by Google and Microsoft, Solana’s architecture is also inspired by Filecoin, a decentralized data storage cryptocurrency project.ĭisclaimer: Solana is incredibly complex. The Solana team consists of former Qualcomm, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Dropbox employees. Solana is developed by a company of the same name which is based in San Diego, California. This comes from founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s own experience watching telecommunications technologies almost double in capability every year during his time at Qualcomm. The team at Solana has designed their blockchain with a long-term vision in mind. In contrast to other similar projects such as Polkadot and Ethereum 2.0 (once it is released), Solana is a single blockchain (layer 1) and does not delegate operations to other attached chains (layer 2). This allows Solana to process 50-65 000 transactions per second with a theoretical limit of over 700 00 transactions per second (compared to Bitcoin’s 7 TPS and Ethereum’s 15 TPS). It uses a proof of stake consensus mechanism with a low barrier to entry along with timestamped transactions to maximize efficiency. Solana is a high-performance cryptocurrency blockchain which supports smart contracts and decentralized applications. Solana’s revolutionary whitepaper was quietly published in November 2017.

He knew it was possible to build since Google and Intel had both implemented similar technologies in their own databases, albeit in a centralized manner. Yakovenko theorized that timestamping transactions would exponentially increase the scalability of a cryptocurrency blockchain without sacrificing its security or decentralization.

Solana time clock