Solana Blockchain - Crypto Academy / S4W4 - Homework post for pelon53.

Introduction

This week's lesson was on the Solana blockchain which is the fastest blockchain in the world. The aim of Solana blockchain is to create high-traffic Dapps (Dapps that can handle large work load in a little amount of time)

Solana blockchain was created by Anatoly Yakovenko, who launched Solana Labs in 2017 and launched it's mainnet in 2020. The project uses a combination of the Proof of History consensus algorithm and the Proof of Stake consensus for the improvement of scalability in the network. As of recent, Solana can handle 60,000 transactions per second and is still expecting to improve in its scalability with the advancement of technology.

The Proof of History Consensus (PoH)

Every blockchain depends on a consensus algorithm or a combination of consensus for its mining process and the validation of blocks. Transactions that are done in the network are validated by nodes in the network, and rewards given to the validator of the transaction.

The most popular consensus algorithm is the Proof of Work. This algorithm has a lot of setbacks ranging from great need for large computational power to large energy supply needed for computation. The Proof of Stake, which is the second most popular consensus algorithm, faces the problem of monopoly by the validators with the greatest value of stake in the network.

With the problems of these two (and other) popular consensus, Solana blockchain combines the Proof of History and Proof of Stake for its validation process.

What is the Proof of History? The Proof of History is a more secure consensus that does not require large computational power or competition among nodes.

The Proof of History consensus uses the SHA256 hash function to compute the output of a transaction or event as the input for the following event. Each transaction would have a unique hash and count as a function of real time. With this event, it is easy to tell the sequence in which the events or transactions occured.

With this development, each node has a cryptographic clock that allows the network to agree on the time and sequence of events and transactions without the need to wait for data from other nodes.

The Proof of History creates a cryptographic timestamp for events, which makes it easy for the record of the transaction to be available to all nodes simply by the ability of the nodes to recognize the time stamp.

Use Cases of Solana

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Orca

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Orca is a DEX that is built on the Solana blockchain using an open source program. Orca uses the AMM (Automated Market Maker) for the exchange rates of the listed assets. The DEX requires that it is connect to a Sollet.io wallet for access to the services offered by the platform.

^{Orca homepage}

The platform supports the exchange of 35 crypto assets with minimal transaction fees and fast transaction speed. Orca also offers staking of the tokens available on the platform which yields passive income to the liquidity providers.

Orca launched its native token -ORCA token- on the Solana blockchain on the 9th of August, 2021. It has a current price of $14.36 and a 24 hour trading volume of $51,963,242. The ORCA token has a very fast transaction speed because it is built on the Solana blockchain. This advantage would support quicker transactions on the Orca platform.

^{liquidity pools}

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Audius

Audius is a music streaming site that was originally built on POA Network, which makes musical content free for all. Audius was moved to the Solana blockchain because of the speed and scalability that the network offers.

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The platform organizes music in different playlists according to a user's tastes. Artists can create accounts which they use to upload their content for other users' listening pleasures. Just like regular social media of nowadays, it is possible for users to follow each other, so that they can be getting notifications on the new releases and achievements of their favourite artistes.

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The platform offers streaming of music at 320kbps, which is the regular standard for high quality music. The site is non-financial, but it is designed in a way that all users (artistes, listeners, etc) earn the native token of the platform as reward for active usage of the platform.

A few popular artistes that use Audius are Deezer, Diplo, Skrillex, deadmau5.

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Audius has a native token which is called AUDIO. AUDIO is an ERC-20 token which is used on the Audius platform to pay for the contents of artistes. With AUDIO, the artistes are paid directly without the involvement of a record label or whatsoever form of middleman.

AUDIO token has a current price of $2.02 and is ranked #101 by market capitalization.

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The SOLA Token

SOLA token is the governing native token of the Solana network. The https://solatoken.net/ platform is a decentralized platform on which Dapps and several projects can be built upon because of its open-source codes. A holder of the SOLA can participate in the decision making on the https://solatoken.net/ platform.

SOLA token is not listed on Coinmarketcap because it's popularity and use cases are not yet fully developed. The number of token holders amount to 1,893 SOLA Token holders and it can only be traded as SOL/USDC pair on the DEX Solana exchange.

Here are some stats on SOLA token as of time of writing:

Feature	Value
Market Cap	$0.067166
24 Hour Trading Vol	$1,666,926
Fully Diluted Valuation	$30,453
Circulating Supply	27,153,077
Total Supply	27,153,077
Max Supply	27,153,077

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Interruption in the Solana Blockchain

On the 14th of September, 2021, the Solana blockchain encountered a problem that endangered the functionality of the network. This problem threatened to shut down the entire blockchain in a matter of hours.

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On the above mentioned date, the Solana mainnet beta experienced a peak in the transaction load up to 400,000 TPS. This overload caused the processing to queue up, which then led to the slowing down of the network. The network eventually began to fork, causing overload in the memory of the network. The overload eventually caused a number of nodes to shut down.

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The Solana engineering team attempted to stabilize the problem, but we're not successful. The team resulted to restarting the network. The team came under scrutiny for its idea of restarting the network during the crisis. The network was eventually restarted and updated which finally solved the entire problem. All nodes were back online, and affected programs on the Solana blockchain were stabilized.

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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.

The last block generated as at the time of writing is block number 98,905,730. Further insight on the block revealed that a total of 1,439 transactions are recorded in this block.

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• According to Solana, it takes 0.5 seconds to complete a block.

• This means that in 1 second, 2block would be validated.

• 1 sec = 2 blocks

• x sec = 98905730 blocks

• x sec = 98905730/2

• x = 49,452,865 seconds

This implies that it took 49,452,864 seconds to mine the current block.

Hence, it took approximately 1.56 years to mind the current block.

Conclusion

Solana blockchain is recently the fastest blockchain recently. It has a lot of dapps and projects built on the network which aim at utilizing the speed and scalability that the blockchain offers. Solana has also proved that it is capable of recovering from attacks and damages that may occur in the network, just like back in September 14, 2021.

I have created this assignment post and hereby completed the tasks.

Special thanks to @pelon53.