With the booming meme culture on Solana, the platform is gaining increasing attention in the market, with many considering it a major competitor alongside Ethereum. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the Solana ecosystem, covering its narrative, development history, key technologies, and various projects within the ecosystem. Readers will gain a full understanding of Solana from multiple perspectives.

Summary

Solana prioritizes simplicity and composability, standing out with its parallel processing, low fees, and fast transaction speeds, making it a leader in the integrated blockchain space.

Despite facing challenges, Solana's ecosystem has swiftly recovered through various measures aligned with its consistent vision, reclaiming market share.

Solana is adopting various innovative applications based on its unique and developer-friendly infrastructure, particularly leading in retail adoption areas such as DePIN, mobile, and payments.

While Solana's vision is often compared to Apple's values, emphasizing harmony between software and hardware and focusing on performance and user experience, Solana places greater emphasis on new experiences through software rather than hardware convenience, leading to heightened expectations.

一. Introduction

Historically, the infrastructure market, often referred to as the capital industrial market, has been characterized by winners taking all or a few dominant players. Similarly, since the emergence of Ethereum nearly nine years ago as a smart contract platform, a major focus in the blockchain space has been the market share between different virtual machines (VMs). Ongoing debates over VM trends and infrastructure needs in each time period suggest that VMs with various themes will continue to emerge and evolve, further expanding the scale of the blockchain market.

Represented by the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), Solana is undoubtedly a participant sending meaningful signals in this context. Solana significantly facilitates the vertical development of integrated blockchains by highlighting the advantages unique to its modular structure (simplicity, affordability, and speed), and this market seems destined to be dominated by a modular blockchain ecosystem centered around Ethereum. Furthermore, Solana is leading the process of non-chain users adopting blockchain in the decentralized blockchain space, focusing on areas such as DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network), mobile, and payments.

There is a popular saying in the market: "Solana is no longer an alternative, it can only be achieved on Solana (Only Possible on Solana)." This article discusses the rapid recovery of Solana's market share in the ecosystem, the resilience demonstrated by Solana, its unique characteristics, and what we can learn from Solana's approach.

二. Solana's Distinct Narratives

2.1 Representative of Integrated Blockchains

As Ethereum shifts its roadmap towards a Rollup-centric approach, the concept of modular blockchains has surged, with related projects taking the lead in market share. The essence of modular blockchains involves allocating roles of consensus, execution, settlement, and data availability to different protocols, thereby overcoming the limitations of integrated blockchains by improving scalability and flexible governance.

However, complexity is a key flaw in the structure of modular blockchains. Consider the process of handling individual transactions through various protocols; this complexity includes continuously checking compatibility and dependencies, increased communication costs, and difficulties in quickly identifying and resolving unforeseen issues. How can such a system confidently stabilize? For infrastructure to be stable and sustainable, it must fundamentally be simple.

Solana leads the integrated blockchain faction by prioritizing simplicity and composability. Since its launch, Solana has built a unique technology stack, prioritizing these values, attracting unique applications distinct from the Ethereum ecosystem, and nurturing a growing community.

This demonstrates the effectiveness and importance of the integrated blockchain approach in the industry, challenging idealism and an academic atmosphere dominated by practical use cases, especially in Ethereum-centered areas. Additionally, this undoubtedly influenced the emergence of various integrated blockchains today (such as Sui, Aptos, Sei, etc.), and will continue to do so.

2.2 Driving Success for Product-Driven Entrepreneurs

Solana's emphasis on simplicity and composability is not just aimed at improving surface performance through expensive hardware but also at designing a network by optimizing and simplifying software and communication technologies, ensuring functionality is almost equivalent to that of a single node.

The importance of creating a developer-friendly environment is self-evident. Developers can eliminate all complexities associated with stack choices for application building and ensure compatibility among various smart contracts, optimizing their resources. The benefits of low latency, low costs, and parallel processing lead to a localized cost market, eliminating inefficient communication caused by bottlenecks in individual applications.

Furthermore, Solana provides a range of built-in features within its simple technology stack, such as a configurable token standard library, cross-chain interoperability, and RPCs for token balance queries, without relying on external indexers, facilitating organic interaction between applications.

By offering comprehensive technical, financial, and operational support programs to developers, Solana provides an ideal environment for product-driven developers, strengthening the ecosystem aligned with Solana's values.

2.3 Breaking Down the Boundaries

between On-Chain and Off-Chain Blockchain technology is inherently inconvenient, but its unique value to the real world makes participation and construction in this ecosystem reasonable. However, this value becomes meaningless if not adopted. Solana understands this better than any other mainnet and is likely aiming for practicality rather than being overly influenced by the values initially pursued by blockchain. Solana's vision for its blockchain ecosystem is "true adoption."

Solana is currently focusing on three main areas: DePIN, mobile, and payments, which are closely related to our everyday infrastructure. DePIN utilizes blockchain decentralization to maintain and operate real-world infrastructure networks, forming a rapidly evolving narrative around Solana. Solana's low costs and fast processing are particularly suitable for capital-intensive real-world infrastructure areas such as computing and storage assistance, telecommunications, map drawing, and data centers. The development of DePIN and payments will make significant contributions to building real-world infrastructure using Web3 functionalities, and vice versa, serving as a primary way to bring off-chain users into the Solana on-chain environment. These off-chain users can naturally accumulate on-chain experience through devices like Saga mobile devices and leverage various on-chain asset categories, including RWAs.

In conclusion, Solana's ecosystem not only blurs the boundaries between on-chain and off-chain spaces but also enhances the importance of each domain.

三. Solana's Dramatic Journey

The cryptocurrency industry has experienced rapid growth in a relatively short time, garnering significant attention. The fluctuations experienced during this growth have become a familiar phenomenon for industry participants. However, Solana has faced particularly exceptional levels of volatility. During the peak of the blockchain boom from 2021 to 2022, Solana rapidly climbed the ranks to become the fourth-largest ecosystem by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins, thanks to FTX, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). However, FTX's collapse dealt a significant blow to the Solana ecosystem, leading to a 97% drop in the SOL token price from its peak.

Despite facing such a severe crisis, Solana is steadily regaining influence. With active involvement from developers and businesses, the ecosystem has become stronger than before. These dramatic events were made possible because of Solana's unwavering vision and robust execution capabilities.

3.1 Solana Introduction

"Single-Shard Global Synchronous State Machine with Light-Speed Consensus"

Solana's journey began in late 2017. Anatoly Yakovenko, drawing from his experience at Qualcomm, researched blockchain technology and identified a significant issue with existing solutions: the lack of a trustless universal clock that all validators could use for transaction timestamps.

As a solution, Anatoly proposed a new method that utilizes the SHA-256 cycle to encode the passage of time and synchronize clocks among multiple nodes through this data structure. Unlike traditional blockchains that require extensive communication between nodes to agree and order transaction times, having a globally verifiable clock allows the network to synchronize more easily, processing transactions almost immediately upon arrival.

This idea materialized into Proof of History (PoH), aligning with Solana's assumption that if software doesn't impede hardware, the network's performance can increase linearly with hardware advancements. Today, Solana can handle thousands of transactions per second, with block times recorded at 400-500 milliseconds—far surpassing the performance of existing blockchains.

Ultimately, Solana's adoption of this technological approach aims to achieve two missions: a scalable platform capable of handling high throughput and composability between applications. Through the design of an integrated blockchain that shares a globally synchronized single state, developers can write programs (i.e., smart contracts) more easily, simplifying application development and improving the end-user experience.

3.2 Resilience Amid Adversity: Overcoming Challenges

Solana's development philosophy, utilization of multithreading for parallel processing, and consistently strong network performance have played a crucial role in shaping a community centered around pragmatic developers. At a time when the blockchain narrative peaked, the rapid transactions and low-cost demands brought about by the DeFi and NFT frenzy propelled Solana as a true competitor to Ethereum's mainnet.

However, the collapse of FTX temporarily halted this scenario. At that time, Solana was closely associated with SBF, who openly supported the Solana ecosystem and attracted various projects like the DEX project Serum and a range of projects typically found in the Ethereum ecosystem to Solana. With SBF's support, FTX grew into the world's second-largest centralized exchange, thereby increasing his influence within Solana. However, FTX misused company assets and client deposits for loans and to invest in its hedge fund, Alameda Research, leading to its collapse. This consequently posed a risk of collapse to the Solana ecosystem heavily reliant on FTX.

Despite the seeming fragility of Solana's ecosystem, builders resonating with Solana's principles still existed. The first step Solana took in this situation was to enhance the network's stability and developer-friendly environment by addressing technical issues, thereby restoring community trust.

3.2.1 Technical Aspects

Solana Network's architecture is susceptible to spam attacks, leading to frequent network crashes. This issue primarily stems from the design intent of the network, which employs a cheap fixed-fee system and a scheduled leader node system to maximize communication speed. To address these issues, Solana has taken a series of measures to improve, including introducing QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections), Quality of Service (QoS) based on staked weight, and a localized rate market.

QUIC

Solana Network uses a custom UDP protocol for communication between RPC and leader nodes. This approach simplifies the communication process and speeds up transmission but lacks reliability and control elements due to the inability to confirm data packet transmission (i.e., acknowledgment) and identify source IPs, making it vulnerable to spam attacks. UDP's characteristics are suitable for services requiring real-time streaming continuity but not for blockchain environments that require security and stability.

To overcome these issues, Solana decided to adopt the QUIC protocol developed by Google. QUIC is a new communication protocol based on UDP that retains UDP's advantages while simplifying TCP's connection flow and handshake process. As a result, QUIC allows Solana to achieve reliable communication by only retransmitting stream requests for lost data packets, continuing to transmit the remaining packets without interruption, significantly improving network efficiency.

Quality of Service (QoS) Based on Staked Weight

When network demand exceeds network processing capacity, Quality of Service (QoS) prioritizes certain types of traffic. With the introduction of QUIC, discussions arose about its use—Solana's leader nodes previously used UDP, considering only arrival time when processing transactions, without considering their source. However, through QUIC, Solana's leader nodes can now identify the IP of the requesting transaction, allowing them to assign and limit traffic priority for certain connections.

The degree of traffic limitation is proportional to the staked SOL amount, which is the essence of the Quality of Service policy based on staked weight. In other words, the maximum data packets a validating node can transmit is proportional to the amount of SOL tokens staked on the Solana network, increasing the likelihood of transactions exceeding a single node's transaction limit being discarded by leader nodes. This approach aims to prevent malicious validating nodes from causing spam attacks while encouraging validators with high transaction demand to stake more SOL tokens, enhancing Solana's security and demand for SOL tokens.

Localized Rate Market

Although Solana adopts a fixed Gas fee policy, maintaining a constant cost advantage, intense competition for block space may lead to transaction failures, or users trying to ensure their transactions' success may trigger network spam attacks. To address this issue, the Solana ecosystem began discussing the introduction of a rate market system. This system allows users to add a premium to their fees to ensure quick processing of their transactions, thereby preventing spam activities and improving network efficiency.

Furthermore, Solana adopted a localized rate market approach, limiting it to specific applications or markets, to mitigate the overall network impact when specific operation demands increase block space competition. This logic is implemented because each Solana transaction specifies in advance the specific account state part to be modified, and transactions can be processed in parallel. For example, even if the Gas fees for a specific NFT minting surge due to high demand, it won't affect the rate market of unrelated accounts, such as token transfers. Currently, the localized rate market applies to specific applications, markets, and AMM pools, limiting the maximum computational units (CUs) per program in each block to 25% in the "hotspot" where intense fee competition due to excessive transactions occurs.

Discussions on the localized rate market are ongoing, including fee structures, and as of writing this text, the fee policy is as follows.

In addition to this, SIMD-003 discusses the introduction of dynamic base fees to further prevent spam issues, while SIMD-0096 proposes paying leader nodes full priority fees, including the 50% to be burned.

3.2.2 Ecological System and Operational Aspects

In addition to these technical efforts, Solana's ability to attract market interest and regain trust is attributed to actively engaging areas where its technical stack can be well utilized and fostering a developer-centric community.

Strengthening Community Sentiment

The Solana community actively provides necessary resources and support to developers keen on contributing to the ecosystem through platforms like the foundation, hackathons, and super teams making money. Its operational principle is that "benefiting developers is crucial for sustainable ecosystem development."

As part of this, a meme token called BONK, created by the LamportDAO community, airdropped 5% of its total allocation to developers staying in the Solana ecosystem with the hope of rebuilding it. This meme coin helped unify the community, gained attention as developers rebuilt the ecosystem, and at one point recorded a price increase of over 15,680% from its lowest price. The rise in BONK token price sparked a positive cycle of interest in Solana and its ecosystem, ultimately leading to a proposal to airdrop 30 million BONK tokens to Saga mobile device users, further boosting market interest in BONK and the Solana ecosystem.

In turn, protocols like Jito (MEV solution client and staking platform), Pyth Network (oracle network), and Jupiter (decentralized exchange) also announced airdrop strategies, stimulating market interest in Solana. Other protocols within the ecosystem, including Tensor, marginfi, Zeta, Parcl, announced incentive policies, contributing to the ecosystem's vitality by gathering expectations for airdrops among Solana ecosystem participants.

These cases serve as significant examples of how a culture respecting the community combined with excellent product design injects new vitality into an ecosystem.

Approach to Web2 Infrastructure

With the decline of the blockchain boom of 2021-22, a significant question left in the market was, 'Why use blockchain?' Consequently, each mainnet began consolidating its identity further and discussing practical measures for actual adoption. In this context, another factor that significantly piqued market interest in Solana was its rapid execution of various practical initiatives, effectively linking real-world infrastructure with the on-chain world, rather than just pondering these questions.

These initiatives are highlighted by DePIN and Mobile. As explained in the introduction, DePIN utilizes the decentralized nature of blockchain technology to maintain and operate real-world infrastructure. Solana is uniquely pioneering the DePIN field, creating its narrative. This is not only aimed at proposing use cases that can be replaced/supplemented with Web3 syntax for real-world infrastructure but also building a funnel to bring off-chain users into the Web3 world, allowing them to experience Web3. Equipped with an app store and various functionalities, providing a physical environment for these users to aggregate the Solana ecosystem experience is the Saga series of mobile devices launched by Solana in 2022. The initial sales of the Saga series were poor, but with the news of BONK tokens and the spread of vitality in the Solana ecosystem, they sold out by December, and the second batch of series was launched in the first half of 2025, with over 100,000 units booked as of February 13.

The second area is payments. Indeed, peer-to-peer blockchain-based encrypted asset payments are often mentioned as use cases that can meaningfully address intermediaries, high fees, and slow transaction times in traditional financial systems. Solana positions itself as the blockchain best suited for encrypted asset payments, with multi-threaded parallel processing, fast processing speeds, and low transaction costs. It is actively strengthening initiatives in this area, making blockchain transactions as intuitive and straightforward as credit card payments. Circle's USDC has long announced formal cooperation with Solana, and the open-source Solana Pay announced in February 2022 enables various applications to build encrypted asset payment functionalities. The Solana Pay plugin has been integrated into platforms such as Shopify, Citcon, and Checkout.com, and Visa announced the inclusion of Solana in its stablecoin payment infrastructure.

Diversity of Customers and Decentralization of Validators

Furthermore, based on the principle that diversity of validator clients helps improve network stability and security, Solana is committed to improving resilience through various validator client initiatives. Client diversity can minimize the impact of a single software flaw on the entire network, as an error or vulnerability in one client may not be found in another.

Solana initially started with a single client launched by Solana Labs, but with the release of the second client Jito-Solana developed by Jito Labs in August 2022, Solana began achieving client diversity and has tested a version of the standalone validation client Firedancer based on C/C++ developed by Jump Crypto.

Additionally, a lightweight client called Tinydancer, which can verify transactions at low cost, has also garnered significant attention, especially as it reduces the need for high hardware specifications, thus lowering the typical hardware specifications required to run Solana nodes - optimizing hardware specifications to enhance Solana network performance is necessary, but according to Vitalik's Endgame post, reducing node operation specifications to allow more block production is not conducive to network scalability, quality, and stability.

The recommended specifications for running Solana nodes are as follows:

• 12-core CPU, minimum clock speed 2.8GHz

• 128/256GB RAM (RPC nodes may require more for custom database indexing)

• 2-4 NVME drives of at least 1TB

• 10 Gbps network

Ethereum's proposed PBS (Proposer—Builder Separation) structure also follows this background.

Despite the need for high-spec hardware, data centers hosting around 2900 Solana nodes are widely distributed, and the Nakamoto Coefficient (indicating the number of validators that could potentially cause chain operational issues) remains around 20. While geographically concentrated around the United States, ongoing optimizations of software and hardware based on Moore's Law and the operation of delegation procedures based on decentralized standards indicate that Solana is gradually achieving decentralization.

In conclusion, as one of the few chains with multiple independent validator clients besides Ethereum, Solana continues to strive for decentralization and seeks ongoing stability of the network.

Solana has been consolidating its internal infrastructure and actively expanding its business. This process provides sufficient elements to attract institutional investors, with ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood publicly expressing positive prospects for Solana's vision, while Grayscale's Solana Trust product has surged by 869%. Essentially, Solana has demonstrated the potential to restore seemingly crisis-ridden ecosystems through consistent vision and rapid execution.

四. Solana's Multiple Pillars

In this section, we delve into various elements of the Solana technology stack that steadfastly support its strong vision and drive the resurgence of its ecosystem.

4.1 Composability and Efficiency in the Tech Stack

4.1.1 Programming Language

Solana aims to superficially reduce costs and block times while optimizing software technically to fit hardware. This mission requires careful selection of the programming language for programs (i.e., smart contracts), thus choosing Rust, known for its concurrency, memory safety, low-level control, and powerful type system that prevents type errors and ensures code safety and predictability.

However, Solana's ultimate goal is to create an environment where all LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine) compatible programming languages can be used interchangeably. Thus, while Rust is the preferred programming language for Solana, LLVM allows code written in other languages (such as C or C++) to be converted into executable machine code on Solana.

For communication with the Solana network's clients, developers can utilize various SDKs based on the JSON RPC API, using languages like Java, C#, Python, Go, or Kotlin.

LLVM is a modular compiler and toolchain technology that enables high-performance, high-quality code optimization on various hardware platforms, making it the preferred development environment for technically skilled developers.

4.1.2 Core Innovations

Solana has implemented eight core technologies to ensure top-notch speed throughout the process from user-submitted transactions to block generation. To aid in understanding them, let's briefly outline how Solana's consensus mechanism works:

Leader Node Selection: Leader nodes are selected based on the staked weight of nodes delegated by token holders, and validators rotate according to a leader rotation schedule.

Timestamping Transactions: Leader nodes receive transactions and timestamp them using Proof of History (PoH).

Block Creation: Leaders begin creating blocks using their PoH sequences.

Block Propagation: Newly created blocks are sent to replicate nodes (i.e., other validators in the network).

Transaction Validation: Replicate nodes use their PoH sequences to validate transaction order and ensure transactions comply with network rules. Since transaction order depends on their PoH sequences (i.e., global clock), there's no need for P2P communication between nodes.

Block Finalization: Once transaction ordering and validation are complete, the block is added to the blockchain. Then, the next leader is chosen, and the process repeats.

Solana is so fast that it has a leader rotation schedule to ensure leaders are one epoch ahead to prevent blocks from being delayed or outdated.

This will be further clarified in the Proof of History section below.

Proof of History (PoH)

As briefly mentioned in the introduction, PoH's essence is a global clock reference that independently validates all transaction sequences by validators. For example, hashing a previous hash (i.e., hash1) to generate hash2 (i.e., sha256(hash1)) intuitively indicates that hash1 precedes hash2. Solana calls this process "sequencing.

This ordered hash data structure serves as proof of time passing, allowing validators to rotate primary validators without needing to share elapsed time with others. This is why Solana can have shorter block times compared to other blockchains.

Generating this sequence is only possible through single-core processing since it requires referencing previous output hashes, but validation can be done via multi-core processing due to its simple logic - hash computation. Thus, it achieves Solana's philosophy of "linearly scalable verification per node to hardware.

Therefore, PoH is more akin to a global clock data structure or a Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) implemented using sequential hash functions rather than a consensus algorithm; Solana actually uses Tower BFT DPoS as its consensus algorithm.

Tower BFT DPoS

Tower BFT can be described as a PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) version optimized with PoH. Tower BFT leverages Solana's PoH as a global clock for pre-determining order, focusing solely on the consensus process, significantly reducing message overhead and latency. Through Tower BFT, validators achieve consensus as follows.

Validators vote on ledger versions they deem accurate, discarding versions they believe to be incorrect, all without P2P communication, within a fixed slot duration (approximately 400 milliseconds). After a certain point, with each subsequent slot vote, the timeout required to rollback to a previous block doubles. This means that as validators vote in support of the PoH sequence continuing, with validators voting 35 times in the past 14 seconds (14,000 milliseconds / 400 milliseconds = ~35 slots), the network's effective time limit is approximately 435 years (2^350.4/3600/24/365), making rollbacks nearly impossible.

Thus, only the "heaviest sequence" is retained in the blockchain as most validators vote in support, making rollbacks increasingly difficult. In essence, due to PoH, validators with Tower BFT can compute timeouts asynchronously, without needing P2P communication, ensuring timely voting, maintaining network liveliness, and reducing the

likelihood of forks.

Votes are weighted based on each validator's stake in the network.

Gulf Stream

Unlike other blockchains, Solana doesn't require a public mempool to store user transactions since block space is relatively non-scarce due to high transaction throughput. Instead, when users submit transactions, RPC servers convert them into QUIC packets and immediately forward them to validators slated to become the next leader. This approach is called Gulf Stream, allowing rapid leader transitions and pre-execution of transactions, reducing memory load on other validators.

As previously mentioned, initially UDP and updated to QUIC by mid-2022.

Sealevel and Cloudbreak

Sealevel is a core technology in Solana that enables multi-threaded parallel processing, unlike runtimes based on EVM or WASM. It relies on "instructions" in each transaction containing an array of accounts with global state information of the Solana network. Transactions are pre-categorized based on each account's declared read/write states for parallel processing.

It's worth noting that organizing account databases in a way that allows simultaneous reads/writes by multiple threads, even with any traditional database, is highly challenging. To address this, Solana developed Cloudbreak, which optimizes SSD efficiency by partitioning account data structures in a specific way to benefit from sequential operations and using memory-mapped files.

As mentioned earlier, this parallel processing logic in Sealevel is also the reason for implementing a local fee market.

Pipelining

The pipeline technology in Solana's blockchain is a technique that divides the input data stream (i.e., QUIC packets received in advance by the next leader) into multiple processing stages in different hardware components.

The pipeline processing goes as follows:

Data is brought into kernel space and then passed to the GPU for parallel signature verification.

Once signatures are verified on the GPU, data is passed to the CPU for business logic processing.

Meanwhile, the kernel space is ready with the next set of data, and the CPU processes data before recording (writing) it on the blockchain and transferring it to the next block.

Solana maximizes hardware utilization, enhances efficiency, and speeds up block validation and transmission through pipeline technology.

Turbine

After transactions are processed, leaders must propagate state changes to each validator. Sending large amounts of data individually to many validators would be highly inefficient. To address this, Solana employs a technology called Turbine, similar to BitTorrent. Simply put, this technology involves leaders dividing QUIC packets (optionally using error correction codes) into smaller packets and distributing them to validators with a hierarchical structure.

For example, consider a 128MB block. To process this block, leaders divide it into 2,048 64KB packets and distribute them to some validators. These validators then recursively pass fragments of the received packets to the next set of validators, called neighbors, initially chosen among nodes with a high SOL token staking ratio. Validators pass parts of the received data recursively to the next set of neighbors. This architecture allows data initially transmitted by leaders to eventually reach a number of validators exponentially proportional to the size of neighbor groups, as the stages deepen. As the neighbor group size increases, the steps required to connect to the network reduce on a logarithmic scale, facilitating rapid data dissemination.

Especially in cases where a few validators at higher levels engage in malicious activities (e.g., Eclipse attacks), they may have a relatively large impact on the entire network. Therefore, the network adopts a method of sending data packets through different random paths each time.

Archiver

Solana's archivers are used to store about 4PB of data generated by the network annually. They can be seen as lightweight clients that don't download the entire Solana ledger but only store a portion of it, allowing a diverse group of validators with varying hardware requirements to participate.

When archivers are assigned data to store, they validate the data's authenticity through Proof of Replication (PoRep), a technology based on Filecoin. Archivers announce their storage space to the network and receive up to 3% inflation as a reward for storing and validating allocated data.

4.2 Reliability and Scalability of Diverse Clients

The key technologies discussed earlier enable fast transaction processing, parallel execution environments, and low latency, making Solana an ideal infrastructure for building applications on its network. However, Solana's high throughput can pose challenges to network stability, such as MEV bots or spam. In response, Jito became Solana's second client in August 2022 to address the inefficiency of MEV extraction and issues with centralized liquidity pledging protocols, contributing to network stability and decentralization.

Additionally, upcoming enhanced performance clients like Jump Crypto's Firedancer and Tinydancer are essential parts of enriching client diversity within the Solana network.

4.2.1 Jito-Solana

Jito-Solana has activated the MEV market, similar to Ethereum's Flashbots MEV-boost solution. However, due to Solana's unique design with no mempool and primarily processing transactions on a first-come, first-served basis, with much faster block times than Ethereum, the operation of Jito-Solana differs.

Jito's MEV client introduces a virtual mempool that conducts auctions every 200 milliseconds, streamlining the MEV extraction process. With Jito-Solana, searchers can inspect transactions through the Block Engine, simulate bundling, and then approach leader nodes through a dedicated processing pipeline. This off-chain processing of transaction bundling and block auctions minimizes the impact on network congestion.

Since its launch in August 2022, the adoption of Jito-Solana has steadily increased and now stands at 65% as of this writing.

Additionally, Jito has introduced a liquidity pledging mechanism (JitoSOL) into its MEV solution, extending MEV profits to its users and contributing to the expansion of the DeFi ecosystem. They aim to apply JitoSOL operations through StakeNet in a permissionless manner.

4.2.2 Firedancer

Firedancer, developed by the Jump Crypto team, is a brand-new validator client that completely reimagines Solana Labs' client, using C and C++. It aims to enhance performance through software optimization and increase the diversity of validator clients within the ecosystem. A demo version showcased at the November 2022 Breakpoint conference demonstrated its capacity to handle up to 1.2 million TPS (doubled to 600,000 after duplication).

According to Syncracy's "Solana Thesis: The Fastest Horse Rising from the Ashes," using Firedancer might slightly increase node operation costs, but it achieves competitiveness by reaching a competitive TPS/node cost ratio of around 55,000 TPS.

A significant difference between Firedancer and existing clients is its modular architecture, composed of many separate processes called Tiles, allowing optimization of each process. Currently, Firedancer is undergoing testing with a hybrid client called Frankendancer, applying the latest runtime environments and consensus modules from existing clients in Firedancer's architecture.

We await its official launch, but if Firedancer performs significantly better than existing clients, it may guide node operators' client choices toward Firedancer, potentially leading to an inability to achieve client diversity.

4.2.3 Tinydancer

The Solana network lacks a lightweight client function that allows for state verification without running a full node, limiting its validation capabilities. To address this issue, the lightweight client Tinydancer is being developed, making it possible to verify transactions at lower costs without downloading entire blocks or executing transactions. When suspicious transactions are detected, it alerts its reliant full nodes.

Introducing lightweight clients like Tinydancer to the Solana network, which has high hardware specifications for node operation, is a significant milestone in improving accessibility and validation potential. While Tinydancer's design is not finalized, observing whether Solana can provide substantial validation capabilities to a wider user base and achieve "decentralization through affordable validation" remains to be seen.

Having a variety of clients is crucial, as inherent code flaws in a few client software could have catastrophic effects on the entire network. Observing how current and upcoming clients evolve to optimize Solana network performance will be interesting, but these initiatives are ongoing undoubtedly contributing to the positive development of the Solana network.

4.3 Frameworks and Standards for Simplicity and Flexibility

Solana not only provides developers with a mature technology stack as previously outlined but also offers a rich toolkit and a set of standards to support efficient and effective development of various applications on the Solana platform. In general, the main frameworks include:

• Solana Program Library, a collection of on-chain programs developed by the Solana team and community, serving as the standard library for Solana developers. It includes a set of pre-built programs and utility tools such as token creation and management (SPL Token program), token exchange, lending protocols, etc., facilitating the development of decentralized applications on the Solana blockchain.

• Anchor Framework, particularly welcomed by novice developers or those looking to rapidly prototype and deploy applications. It provides a Rust-based DSL, IDL, testing framework, and a suite of security tools.

• GameShift, aimed at simplifying the process of creating blockchain-based games, supporting various functionalities such as building in-game NFT markets.

• UI frameworks like Scaffold and Wallet-Adapter allow developers to easily build front-end web pages and integrate with wallets within the Solana ecosystem.

Additionally, there are recorders like Geyser, Sologger, and IronForge, BankRun.js providing a more comprehensive program testing environment, and a web-based IDE called Solana Playground, among many other available files, frameworks, and tools.

Given the breadth of frameworks introduced, the following highlights some standards and sub-frameworks within the entire category that stand out or are worth anticipating for their unique features or contributions to Solana's development.

4.3.1 Token 2022 (Token Extensions)

While Ethereum freely proposes various token standards, Solana has been using a single SPL token standard, limiting the flexibility of standard extensions compared to Ethereum. With the evolution of blockchain and the rapid increase in demand for complex token functionalities (such as RWAs), Solana Labs has developed a new token standard, "Token 2022 (Extensions)," embedded at the protocol layer to address these inefficiencies.

This new standard adds configurable features to existing SPL tokens to support various use cases without requiring additional libraries. Token extension types include Mint extensions and Address extensions.

The former extends token functionalities, including Transfer Hook (for conditionally executing programs during token transfers), Transfer Fee (assigning fees to specific accounts), rich Metadata, and features like Non-Transferable Token and Confidential Transfer. The latter includes functionalities related to account management, such as Immutable Owner (preventing account ownership reassignment) and Default Account State (setting account states that require specific interactions with projects to use accounts and assets).

Solana Labs' documentation provides detailed descriptions of functionalities and use cases. However, from a functional perspective, standards that can be implemented using token extensions have been discussed or adopted within Ethereum's ERC standard space, but they are not yet included in Ethereum's standard scope. A key difference, though, is that unlike Ethereum's application-level ERC standards, token extensions are implemented at the protocol layer. This brings significant advantages as developers can quickly configure programs without worrying about compatibility issues between different applications - we've seen how dispersed the utilization of Ethereum's ERC-4337 Account Abstraction standard has been when deployed at the application level).

As of the writing of this article, the mainnet deployment plan for Token Extensions is scheduled for winter 2024, with updates available through this link.

4.3.2 xNFT (Executable NFTs)

Anyone who has interacted with blockchain knows there's still a long way to go in terms of user experience. The standards introduced here have the potential for widespread adoption and can significantly enhance user experience.

xNFTs are "executable" assets or code on the Solana blockchain developed by Coral. In essence, code is turned into runnable Web3 application assets through xNFT plugins.

Coral has established "Backpack" as the environment where xNFTs operate, akin to a super app wallet, integrating various Web3 applications (i.e., xNFTs) without the need for separate connections or movements.

Currently, approximately 90 apps are released in xNFT format, covering various domains such as gaming, NFTs, DeFi, etc. Backpack and the xNFT standard based on React are entirely open source, and if more xNFTs are onboarded and support for various blockchains is expanded, they could bring significant user experience innovations to the decentralized app market. Recently, Backpack integrated Backpack Exchange into its interface during the preseason, with the first-day trading volume reaching $300 million, proving its potential.

4.3.3 State Compression

Storing data on the Solana network requires opening a token account and paying rent. While the cost of publishing small amounts of data may be negligible, it becomes an issue for large amounts of data. State compression addresses these issues by combining Solana Labs' account compression with Metaplex's Bubblegum program.

State compression hashes metadata for each asset using a Merkle tree structure, applies it to the structure, and stores the root hash result in the ledger's top. This approach allows for secure data storage using cheaper blockchain ledger space rather than expensive account space, particularly suitable for NFTs as they require managing vast amounts of information.

Therefore, compressed NFTs (cNFTs), follow the same metadata pattern as uncompressed NFTs, but they are not SPL tokens themselves; they only contain identifiers for potential decompression. The decompression process converts cNFTs into standard Solana NFTs, is unidirectional, and is implemented through Metaplex's Bubblegum program.

However, since cNFT data is stored off-chain, a separate program defining interaction methods is needed, dependent on RPC providers, which may incur additional costs. Modifying cNFTs also involves complex and expensive processes, such as changing off-chain data through cryptographic proof authorization.

4.3.4 Solana Pay

Solana Pay is an open-source JavaScript library that simplifies the process of cryptocurrency payments on the Solana blockchain. It uses token transfer URL schemes, enabling businesses or developers to accept SOL or SPL token payments directly without intermediaries. Integration options include payment links, "Pay Now" buttons, or QR codes.

As mentioned earlier, Solana Pay plugins have been integrated with over 100 companies/projects, including Shopify, Citcon, Checkout.com, etc.

4.3.5 Solana Mobile Stack

Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) is an open-source SDK providing tools for developing applications on Solana Foundation's Saga series mobile devices. SMS comprises the following main components:

• Solana dApp Store: Specifically designed for distributing decentralized applications, the dApp store allows users to easily find, install, and use applications, with the ultimate goal of having the store's content primarily managed by the community.

• Mobile Wallet Adapter: A standardized interface facilitating smooth communication between applications and Solana wallets in the mobile environment. By integrating this adapter once, developers can easily connect to various compatible mobile wallets. Currently, it supports Android and Mobile Web, limited to Chrome (Android) only.

• Seed Vault: Designed for use with "wallet" applications, this stack ensures secure storage of users' private keys and other critical information. It allows all downloaded applications on mobile devices to use the same seed.

• Solana Pay for Android: Utilizing Solana blockchain's payment system, this enables users to easily use Solana-related cryptocurrencies (i.e., SOL, SPL) for payments in the mobile environment. Currently available as an Android SDK, it supports executing Solana Pay requests through QR codes, NFC touch, messages, and web browsers.

In addition to these stacks, SMS documentation provides SDKs for various languages/development frameworks, including React Native, Kotlin, Flutter, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Solana KMP. Solana aims to popularize blockchain usage in the mobile environment through SMS provided in the Saga series, driving retail finance by offering integrated DePIN services, DeFi applications, Backpack experiences, etc.

5. Prominent Projects in the Solana Ecosystem

In the early stages of the internet, there was a close relationship between internet speed and the development of applications. Limited bandwidth and low transmission speeds led to long webpage loading times, reducing user accessibility to multimedia content. This environment favored the development of simple web applications focused on exchanging text-based information.

However, with the introduction of broadband internet and advancements in data network technology, internet speed significantly improved, leading to increased complexity and functionality of applications. This made various high-bandwidth applications possible, such as video streaming (e.g., Netflix), online gaming, large file sharing, real-time communication, and collaboration tools. Essentially, the improvement in internet speed fundamentally changed the way digital content is consumed, fostering the development of new applications and services.

By leveraging its consumer/developer-friendly advantages and gradually increasing its decentralization, Solana has built an ecosystem within just 4 years of generating its genesis block, with over 700 decentralized applications.

However, this is just the beginning. Solana's vision extends far beyond this; it is building an infrastructure capable of creating unprecedented value, from efforts to optimize software and hardware, introduce various clients, to expected UX innovations from xNFT & Backpack, and the Solana Mobile Stack, paving the way for an integrated experience. This will explosively spawn more innovative applications.

While detailed introductions of each project will be covered in separate articles, in the subsequent sections of this article, we will briefly introduce some of the most anticipated projects based on Solana's current progress.

5.1 Multichain Features

• Neon EVM

Neon EVM allows the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to run on the Solana blockchain. The project aims to enable Ethereum-based applications and smart contracts to leverage Solana's fast processing speed, low transaction costs, and parallel processing advantages. Ethereum developers can easily migrate their existing Ethereum applications to the Solana network using Neon EVM. Neon EVM allows access to data stored in Solana accounts, with all Ethereum accounts in Neon EVM stored in corresponding Solana accounts.

• Eclipse

Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer 2 based on SVM, using Ethereum as the settlement layer, Celestia for data availability, and RISC Zero's zero-knowledge proof to protect transaction capability.

• Nitro

Nitro serves as a bridge between Solana and Cosmos, aiming to integrate the Cosmos and IBC ecosystems with Solana's runtime environment. Nitro is developing services using Sei Network as the settlement and consensus layer and Nitro as the execution layer, allowing Solana developers to access liquidity of IBC assets and deploy assets or programs to the Cosmos chain through Nitro.

• Wormhole

Created in collaboration between Solana and Certus One, Wormhole is a bridge protocol that can transfer messages and assets between multiple blockchains, including Solana. Wrapped assets in Wormhole are among the most liquid assets on Solana, with its main goal to overcome liquidity fragmentation in the blockchain ecosystem and build an integrated environment where assets and information can freely flow between different networks.

• Allbridge

Originating in the Solana ecosystem in July 2021, Solbridge within the Solana ecosystem, Allbridge underwent a branding improvement to expand to various chains. Like Wormhole, Allbridge is one of the most actively integrated protocols with the Solana ecosystem, adding various functionalities such as Circle's CCTP integration, supporting several messaging protocols, etc.

• LI.FI

LI.FI is a "multichain liquidity aggregator protocol" that integrates various bridging solutions and DEX aggregators across networks, enabling exchanges between any networks. LI.FI operates on the assumption that infrastructure fragmentation will continue to exist, making infrastructure fragmentation necessary for widespread adoption.

5.2 Infrastructure & Tools

• Helius

Helius is a platform that provides API, RPC nodes, Webhooks, and development tools for stable blockchain application development within the Solana ecosystem.

• Pyth

Pyth Network is an oracle network that provides real-time major financial market data, crucial for DeFi services on the blockchain. Currently, Pyth Network collects data from over 90 primary data providers and offers real-time price data for cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and commodities.

• Backpack

  (See 4.3.2 xNFT (executable NFT))

• Phantom & Solfare

Solflare and Phantom are the most widely used wallets in the Solana ecosystem. Phantom wallet is particularly known for its user-friendly interface and NFT management features in the mobile environment, while Solflare wallet is known for its clean interface in the network environment and focus on security.

• Hey Wallet

Hey Wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet based on Solana, designed to help users manage their digital assets intuitively within the Solana ecosystem. Users on Hey Wallet can send and receive SOL and SPL tokens via Twitter posts.

• Squads Protocol

Squads is a multisignature solution that enables companies to securely manage and operate their assets. Through Squads, companies can execute various tasks in a more secure environment, such as financial management, program upgrades, and token distributions approved by multiple team members. Additionally, Squads offers a range of features to enhance the security and effective asset management of Solana projects.

5.3 DePIN

• Helium

Leveraging Solana's performance and state compression capabilities, Helium migrated to Solana to become a 5G wireless network DePIN. Helium's IoT device hotspot users pay network fees using HNT, which are allocated to hotspot operators. Helium network is compatible with various devices and recently launched a $20 per month phone plan offering unlimited data, calls, and texts within the US.

• Hivemapper

Hivemapper is a global map network that collects real-time high-resolution road images using onboard cameras, rewarding contributors with $HONEY tokens. The network has mapped over 125 million kilometers of roads, and users can track their location in real-time using the Scout tool. The onboard camera for Hivemapper ranges in price from $400 to $600.

• Render Network & io.net

Render Network is a distributed GPU rendering network based on the Solana blockchain, where users can provide or utilize computational power for complex 3D rendering tasks using Render tokens. Render Network adopts the Burn Mint Equilibrium (BME) model to balance token supply and demand, ensuring stable service prices.

Similar to Render Network, io.net is a Solana-based distributed GPU computing network. Unlike Render Network, io.net focuses more on inference, parallel learning, hyperparameter tuning, and reinforcement learning. These two projects collaborated in November last year to expand the scale of the GPU vendor market.

• IoTex

IoTeX is a modular Web3 infrastructure platform that connects smart devices and real-world data to the blockchain. Through protocols like W3bstream, IoTeX aims to address data inaccuracy issues with oracles and provide reliable infrastructure for developers to build applications based on real-world data. IoTeX has integrated with Solana, allowing projects based on Solana like Helium, Render, and Hivemapper to utilize IoTeX's platform to verify/use real-world data and activate rewards for contributors and users.

• Teleport

Teleport's Trip Protocol is a decentralized carpooling service built on the Solana network, aiming to address centralization issues in existing carpooling

platforms. The Trip Protocol leverages blockchain technology to ensure transparency and security in trip transactions, enhancing trust among users and drivers. Users can pay for trips using SOL or SPL tokens, and the protocol implements a reputation system to evaluate user and driver behaviors, providing incentives for positive contributions to the network.

• Elrond

Elrond is a Solana-compatible network that focuses on scalability, interoperability, and sustainability. With its high transaction throughput and low fees, Elrond aims to facilitate decentralized finance (DeFi) services, NFT marketplaces, and tokenized assets. The Elrond network also supports smart contracts, enabling developers to create various decentralized applications (dApps) on the platform.

• Moonbeam

Moonbeam is a Solana parachain built to bring Ethereum-compatible smart contracts to the Solana network. By providing compatibility with Ethereum's development environment and tooling, Moonbeam allows developers to deploy existing Ethereum dApps to Solana without significant modifications. This interoperability bridges the gap between Ethereum and Solana, expanding the reach of decentralized applications across multiple blockchain ecosystems.

6. Like Apple, But Different from Apple

Many people, including Solana's co-founder Raj Gokal, have described Solana as the "Apple of the crypto world," emphasizing the harmony between software and hardware, focusing on performance and user experience. This analogy may make Solana's vision more relatable to us. However, ironically, what makes Solana more exciting is not its similarities to Apple but its differences—Solana's approach is entirely opposite to Apple's.

Apple fundamentally sells hardware, making software essentially a means to sell hardware. Even during the era of iPod (which marked a significant milestone in Apple's extraordinary journey), Apple adopted a way to showcase its hardware experience by integrating software like iTunes. However, Solana takes the opposite approach, aiming to integrate hardware to encapsulate the web3 experience, where numerous fully composable applications are organically interconnected. Therefore, compared to Apple's approach, Solana's approach is considered more complex and ambitious, seeking innovation not only through convenient user experiences but also through the software itself providing new experiences.

Lastly, if technology is not used, technology is worthless. Just think about it. One of the main values we seek from blockchain is to serve as an innovative internet infrastructure, capable of complementing real-world systems in this way.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have outlined ideal visions for the future of blockchain, Solana is considering how to practically apply this process and is the first to actively explore real-world use cases. Perhaps we have become overly obsessed with Vitalik's definition of the blockchain trilemma, limiting our imagination of where each blockchain stands within that scope. Ultimately, the protocols that create the most significant value will be those that best understand the needs of users and developers to deliver these experiences.