Solana is one of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ― reaching this impressive milestone only five years after its initial launch. The projects started as the first blockchain using proof-of-history as a consensus mechanism, whereas most ecosystems relied on proof-of-stake or proof-of-work.
The coin helped users benefit from fast transaction speeds and low fees, while the blockchain supported the creation of many successful meme coins, such as BONK or WIF. The thriving environment supported the growth of the Solana price, creating opportunities for massive tax-efficient donations towards different causes.
Overall, Solana is an essential contributor to the crypto ecosystem, but its app-building capabilities, tools, and developers created a foundation of trust and reliance on decentralization. So, here’s why choosing Solana as an app developer is a great idea.
Solana is an efficient ledger
Solana is a Web3 infrastructure whose focus is to bring decentralization closer to the real world by making it approachable. Therefore, the team behind the project achieved a high level of efficiency by providing:
- The proof-of-history consensus mechanism uses timestamps and hashes to make the transaction verification process fast and safe;
- The modular infrastructure contributes to high scalability without hindering the quality of performance;
- The development language that allows the blockchain to work and communicate with other ledgers is also known as interoperability;
Solana might be the closest to solving the blockchain trilemma, which discusses a ledger’s ability to achieve scalability, security, and decentralization simultaneously. While this was only a theory in the past, it is now getting closer to reality.
Solana has a robust smart contract framework
Although Ethereum is more popular for its smart contract functionalities, Solana provides an often-underrated framework for smart contracts, known as programs. The uniqueness of the technology lies in its differences from traditional EVM-enabled blockchains, which connect the code and the state in a single contact. On the other hand, Solana ensures the smart contracts are in a stateless mode with the program logic, so external accounts can access them after they’ve been written.
Many prefer Solana for building apps since it prioritizes safety and has an approachable programming language, Rust, known for its high performance. Still, Solana also supports the use of C++ and C. The Solana ecosystem also supports a vast array of developing tools that help users interact with and build on the blockchain, such as third-party SDKs (software development kits).
Solana is climate-friendly
Due to its environmentally friendly features, Solana might have a bright future in the world of decentralization. As opposed to Bitcoin, whose environmental impact is linked to mining and contributes to rising carbon emissions, Solana is making efforts to use less energy and reduce its carbon footprint.
Proof-of-work blockchains are known for establishing the ecosystem we know today, but they’ve become highly inefficient since mining requires high-powered computers to create new blocks. But Solana’s proof-of-history created unique mechanisms to reduce processing time and power for verifying transactions, as well as processing them in parallel. According to the latest Energy Impact Report, Solana’s annual energy consumption is 8.482 mWh, while Bitcoin’s is 159.8 TWh.
Solana is preferred for creating tokens
Besides decentralized apps, Solana has become an efficient tool for designing and deploying cryptocurrencies, such as meme coins. Some of the most popular projects on the blockchain include the following:
- BONK is a dog-themed meme coin with vast utility features, like staking mechanisms;
- POPCAT is a coin based on the meme with the same name that gained immediate attention;
- PENGU is the meme coin from the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection;
While meme coins are a niche in the crypto industry, communities that support them are considerably important for engagement. Solana is open to helping developers create all sorts of tokens and projects, which is why it’s been one of the best blockchains for meme coins, as even the TRUMP coin was deployed on it.
Solana has many use cases
While Solana focused on app development lately due to the demand, its use cases also contribute to growing utility. People use Solana for:
- Its high-frequency trading platforms;
- Low-latency gaming applications;
- Micropayment systems;
- NFT marketplaces with high transaction volumes;
Therefore, Solana has expanded its utility to multiple areas, from decentralized finance applications and NFT marketplaces to gaming platforms and high-throughput systems. Solana facilitates rapid transactions and cost-effective operations, benefiting all user categories, from investors and traders to developers. At the same time, the scalable environment made Solana the market leader next to its competition, Ethereum.
Still, Solana is not perfect
Like any emerging crypto platform, Solana struggles with several aspects that need to be addressed for global adoption to happen. For instance, the validators that support the blockchains’ security and efficiency might not be able to withstand millions of users and transactions at some point in the future.
A rapid solution would include centralizing several data centers to facilitate all transactions, but this would interfere with the blockchain’s decentralized nature. Therefore, Solana is prone to outages, leading to delays and high transaction failure rates.
Therefore, recent events have raised centralization concerns. Since Solana is gaining popularity due to its contribution to a growing DeFi ecosystem, the limited validator distribution is not enough to sustain this boost in popularity.
Another issue is smart contract challenges. While the project has been praised for introducing testing and auditing for all decentralized applications, this increases costs and development time. Moreover, some consider the ecosystem maturity to hinder app development since the blockchains lack the depth of development resources found in Ethereum.
Final considerations
Solana has grown considerably in the past years, with its unique consensus mechanism and approach for app development placing it among the leading projects in terms of market capitalization. As a reputable competitor of Ethereum, Solana provided faster and more affordable ways to enhance the functionalities of smart contracts. At the same time, the cryptocurrency has grown in utility for investors, traders and developers. The blockchain is a great tool for developing apps due to its efficiency, sustainability and interoperability.
