Hello everyone. This is my assignment for the professor @pelon53. But before starting, i want to say huge thanks to professor for sharing this much interesting lecture about the Solana blockchain.

Question 1. Explain in detail the PoH of Solana.

Many types of blockchain has been introduced time by time by different personalities. Each blockchain is more advanced as compare to the previous one with some advanced features. The Solana blockchain is one among them. This is a decentralized blockchain which is fast in speed and can perform more transactions at once.

The Solana blockchain use the Proof of History protocol to speed the blockchain. Here one thing is noticeable that why the protocol name is as "history . It is because each hash function is linked with the subsequent hash function. The output of one hash is input of subsequent hash function and thus a relation is created between them. Thus we named this protocol as "proof of history."

This blockchain also known as the hybrid blockchain as it combine the PoS and PoH. The PoH make this open source blockchain fast and more than 50000 transactions can be verified in one second. This protocol solve the clock problems on the network. It prove that all the transactions on the network are performed network or after an event.

The Solana blockchain has solved the scalability issues which we seen in the old blockchain such as Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain. This third generation and open sourced blockchain is not just fast but comparatively more scalable. This blockchain was introduced with high speed, throughput and efficiency but cost is low here.

In the old blockchain, the record of all the transactions was stored according to the blockchain time stamp. But the Solana blockchain is different from all of them. Here the PoH protocol is use which make a record of all the transactions in real time. Verifiable delay function is use in this cryptographic sequence protocol where a record is created for all the transactions. In this record , it is stored that which event occur at what time and how much time is spent on any event. While producing the output, the VDF make it sure that input cannot be generated from the output.

The VDF is also use to solve the clock problems. On the PoH, the transactions get verified publically which speed up this blockchain.

Multiple transactions are performed on the network every second. But with the proof of history, the transactions which are performed on the network can be interacted in a better sequence.

The PoH speed up the network as there are more than 1000 validators on the network. The participants on the network produce a new block after performing a transactions. There is no strict and hard rules for the nodes to present or to line up on the network entirely. The network burden got light and thus it work smoothly.

The solana blockchain is gaining attention of the traders day by days because of its advanced features. The speed to perform a transaction on this blockchain is super with low fee. The blockchain provide you a level of security and full control on your account.

Key points

1- The Solana Blockchain is decentralized, more scalable, efficient and fast

2- This blockchain is low cost

3- The VDF is use on this network to solve the clock problems.

4- There are more than 1000 validator and transactions which are performed on the network are verified publically.

5- You can perform 50000 transaction in one second on the Solana blockchain.

6- No input can be generated from the output.

7- The output of one hash is input of subsequent hash function and thus a relation is created between them.

8- The crime acts are reduced because Tower Bizantine Fault Tolerance is used as the network clock.

9- Time to Finality to make it sure that the transactions which get stored on the network are immutable.

10- The PoH store all the data of the transactions and the events which has occured on the network.

Source

Question 2- Explain at least 2 cases of use of Solana

BlockAsset

Multiple decentralized applications are there to connect the fans with their favorite athletes or favorite players. One among them is the BlockAsset. This application provide a platform where the Fans get close to their favorite athletes and get to know much more about them.

This verified NFT market place provide an amazing and healthy environment for the fans. The fan can buy the tokens and can participate in the decision making activities. This platform is based on the Solana blockchain which mean that it is highly scalable, efficient and reliable.

The fans on this platform select their favorite athlete and can decide how they want to interact with them. There are three core components of this amazing platform.

• A blockchain NFT (nonfungible-token) marketplace - this is the central hub of the Blockasset ecosystem

• NFT ticketing facility

• An NFT gaming suite^_(source)

The fans and the athletes have a healthy and trustable platform to interact with each other. The sports fan can easily buy or sell the NFT tokens on this platform. Initially the payment was acceptable only in the crypto coins but the advancement in expected and soon the payment will be accepted in Fiat currencies on this platform. Here the fans can get a good opportunity to hold the NFT and to interact with their favorite athletes at the same time.

BLOCK is the native token of this platform. The net price of this token on the time of writing this task is $1.07 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $89,212.17 USD. 

Phantom Wallet

Another amazing use case of the Solana blockchain is the Phantom wallet. This Solana based platform is fast, reliable and secure. The people can store their assets on this wallet for as long as they want without any threat of being hacked. You can even send your tokens to anyone and can earn the reward by staking your assets.

This is very famous wallet among the users as they feel more secure to store their tokens on this wallet. You can even send or receive the tokens on this wallet. This is a decentralized wallet, no third party is there. The whole access is given to the users. He have full control over his wallet. They feel more secure as no third person can access their wallet.

This wallet also enable its user to swap their tokens easily on this platform. They can earn the reward by staking their assets too.

The wallet provide you the following facilities.

• Full control of your wallet.

• Full security as no third party is there. This is decentralized wallet.

• Work on the Solana blockchain

• More secure and fast.

• The users can send and recieve the tokens on this wallet

• The wallet allow the people to stake their coin over here easily

• The people can even swap their assets.

To add the Phantom wallet extension on your chrome, click on the Add chrome button.

You can stake the SOL tokens on this wallet but you have to keep some sol in your wallet while staking purpose as the gas fee. The market price of the SOL is the

Question 3. Detail and explain the SOLA token.

The Sol token is a native token of the solana blockchain. This Solana blockchain based token is fast and reliable. You can buy SOL on the solana blockchain, can do payment using this token on the blockchain or perform the trading. This token have all the characteristics as the Solana blockchain has as it provide the high security and low cost.

Sola token can be earn as the reward for verifying the transaction or perform the staking on the Solana blockchain. You can use the SOL token to make a payment on the Solana blockchain like if you want to perform a transaction on the blockchain, you have to pay the transaction fee in SOL token.

The total of 489 million SOL tokens were released among which 297,553,480.61 SOL are in circulation. The 47% of the total coins has been distributed among the public. The SOLA is governance token of the SOLA market place. This token was released in August, 2021. The airdrop strategy was adopted to promote the Sola token.

Initial Distribution of Sola Token

• 6,153,077 $SOLA to liquidity providers.

• 1,000,000 $SOLA to Community Development

• 10,000,000 $SOLA to the Investors of platform

• 1,000,000 $SOLA to adviser

• And the rest 5,000,000 $SOLA to team

• 4,000,000 $SOLA to marketing
  

This token is at rank 7 in the market with market price 135.80$. The market capitalization of the SOL token is $40,408,332,452 and fully diluted market cap is 69,321,417,649. this coin is listed on multiple popular exchange in which the binance and coinbase exchange are listed on the top.

Below is the trading view of the Sol token where we can see that there is a decline in the market price. The coin was in uptrend in the starting week of the September but now the price is fluctuating and moving downward with slight movements.

Question 4. When did Solana Blockchain see its operations interrupted? Why? Explain.

If you are active in crypto world, then you must know about the news of the Solana blockchain. Just a few week ago, there was a downtime on the Solana blockchain. On the 14 September, the Solana blockchain was slow down and this downtime was lasted for more than hours. The system got fail and the people were not able to perform the transaction on the blockchain.

The team announced the reason behind this failure on the tweeter. They gave a statement that the occurrence bundles of transaction per second slow down the network. They tweeted that more than 400000 transactions per second was the reason behind the system downtime. Because of the system failure, the protocols associated with the blockchain were not able to work. The system got over loaded and shut down.

Source

An IDO was launched on the Rydium where the bot generated transactions were caused a flood on the blockchain to verify almost 400000 transaction per second. This over load was caused the system failure. The engineers tried to overcome this problem but still multiple nodes on the network waited to perform transaction until the system get stable.

This downtime caused a fall in the SOL price. The token trended downward and the investors faced lose. The system was started on the next day at about 5 PM. This mean that the system remained stop for almost 17 hours.

Check the last block generated in Solana and make an approximate calculation of How many blocks per second have been generated in Solana, taking into account from the initial block to the current one? Justify your answer and show screenshots.

- Visit the link

• The current block is the 99,120,087

• Hash= DmhGbBmhCHdqgmwRULYJy8Mfvuu1rB8KYfq3u1Vtgia9

• Time stamp=Sep 30, 2021 at 22:52:11 GMT+5

• Parent Blockhash= HxibU4pNR9T377NpXpSFM9NGkkmNVsCoWaCgVvPapdf3

We know that on the bitcoin blockchain, we required 10 minutes to create a new block. But the block creation time on the Solana blockchain is just 0.5 second. It mean that 2 blocks can be created in one second which is super fast as compare to the BTC blockchain.

When you scroll down the page, you get the information about the transactions which are performed in block 99,120,087. We can see that the total 1552 transactions has been performed.

Block 1

To explore the block 1, we need to write the hash of this on the search bar of the website.

Hash of the block 1= AcknnkY4ok5BZuk69WijDETKVRUPZoMtniZHMe4ZaK1e.

Blocks per Second Calculation

We know that 2 blocks are created on the Solana blockchain in every second. The below is the formula to calculate the number of the generated block.

Block per second = current block number × time per block

- Current block=99121,775

• Block per second = 99,121,775 x 0.5

• Block per second= 49,560,887.5

The genesis block was generated in March, 16, 2020 and today is Sep 30, 2021. There are 563 days between these time duration. We know 2 blocks are generated in every second so

1 minute = 60 second so

0.5 x 60= 120 blocks in every second

There are 60 minutes in 1 hour so

120 x 60= 7200 blocks in one hour'

There are 24 hour in one day so

24 x 7200 = 172800 block in every day

There are 563 days between genesis block and the currently generated block so

563 x 172800= 97,286,400

The difference is clear which is about

99121,775 - 97,286,400= 2,135,375

Conclusion

The Solana blockchain is very secure, fast and more scalable. Multiple transactions can be performed on the network per second which attract the users attention as the speed is very important factor. The decentralized nature of the blockchain make it more secure and give full privacy and control of account to the user. The user do not need to pay very high amount as transaction fee to perform a transaction.

The SOL is the native coin of this blockchain which is also getting great popularity day by day from the traders as it rank on number 7 and listed on multiple market exchanges.

I thanks to the professor @pelon53 for this very informative and interesting lecture.