Solana (blockchain platform)
Solana is a public blockchain that uses proof-of-stake and supports smart contracts, with SOL as its native token. It was founded in 2018 by Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal and launched in March 2020 by Solana Labs in San Francisco. Solana is designed to handle many transactions quickly and cheaply, aiming to be a faster, cheaper alternative to Ethereum, especially during the NFT boom in 2021.
The platform’s architecture focuses on high throughput, but rapid growth has led to several outages when activity spiked. Notable downtimes occurred in September 2021 (about 17 hours), May 2022 (a few hours), and October 2022 (about 6 hours).
In 2021 Solana raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and the price of SOL surged, pushing market capitalization into the tens of billions. The ecosystem faced challenges including a wallet hack in August 2022 linked to Slope Finance, the FTX bankruptcy in November 2022 that impacted SOL, and regulatory scrutiny in 2023 over whether SOL should be considered a security.
In 2023 Solana Mobile released the Solana Saga smartphone with built-in Solana apps, and Visa announced support for Solana-based payments using USDC. In January 2025, Trump’s memecoin, $TRUMP, began using the Solana blockchain, briefly boosting usage.
Today, Solana continues to be developed by Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation, focusing on fast, scalable, and affordable transactions for decentralized apps.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 17:52 (CET).