What is Solana? — A Complete Guide to SOL

Solana is a decentralized blockchain platform designed to support high-speed, low-cost applications at global scale. Its native token, SOL, powers the network — used to pay transaction fees, participate in governance, and earn staking rewards. As of 2026, Solana is the #7 cryptocurrency by market cap at $49.7 billion.

Solana was created by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former Qualcomm and Dropbox engineer who published the original Proof of History whitepaper in 2017. Together with colleague Greg Fitzgerald and several other ex-Qualcomm engineers, Yakovenko founded Solana Labs and launched the mainnet in March 2020.

What makes Solana unique is its combination of Proof of History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS). PoH creates a verifiable cryptographic timestamp for every transaction, allowing validators to process data in parallel without inter-node communication delays. The result: 65,000+ TPS capacity and average transaction fees of less than $0.01.

Solana supports a rich ecosystem including DeFi (decentralized finance), NFT marketplaces, blockchain gaming, decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN projects like Helium), and real-world asset tokenization. Major payment networks including Mastercard have integrated Solana into digital payment programs, and Western Union partnered with Crossmint to bring USDPT stablecoin payments onto the Solana network.