Solana - Interesting Crypto Projects Series

Solana is a high-speed layer-1 blockchain created in 2017 that aims to scale throughput beyond what is commonly achieved by popular blockchains, like Ethereum and Bitcoin, while maintaining low costs.
It boasts a unique consensus mechanism called Proof-of-History that allows Solana to process transactions almost instantly. Solana can theoretically process more than 65,000 transactions per second without scaling solutions, thanks to this lightning-fast timing mechanism, which is a version of proof-of-stake.
Solana also has a vibrant non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem after Ethereum. Thanks to its fast and cheap transactions, many NFT enthusiasts and creators have called Solana home for their NFT projects, therefore it is no surprise that numerous decentralized applications (DApps) in this list are NFT-related.
Although the layer-1 chain is a favorite when it comes to challenging Ethereum, Solana has faced an array of past problems. This includes the downtime suffered by the network and the impact of FTX’s collapse on its ecosystem projects. However, the strong community of builders and users on Solana saw through these setbacks during the bear market and turned out stronger. Now, the Solana ecosystem is a thriving one, with tons of exciting projects launching and building on the chain.
How Does Solana Work?
Solana targets the blockchain trilemma by designing a unique consensus mechanism that compromises on decentralization to maximize speed.
The more transactions per second (TPS) a blockchain can support, the more scalable it is. But in decentralized blockchains, higher throughput slows the blockchain down because of tiny discrepancies in time. With locally timestamped transactions, nodes verify timestamps to validate transactions. More nodes verifying transactions and timestamps takes more time.
Solana solves this by having one node as the leader sequencing messages between nodes, which is chosen based on a Proof-of-Stake mechanism.
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