In-Depth Overview of Solana

In-depth Overview of Solana

Solana is bringing a revolution to the entirety of the Crypto community, I’m personally surprised Solana hasn’t blown up at least 5x what it’s worth today. Granted, it’s very fresh on the market it's only been there since roughly April of 2020, almost straight out of beta but with that being said it’s already one of the biggest in the game, and that alone, says a lot, especially with how saturated Cryptocurrency is. Today I’m gonna discuss why Solana is considered the Ethereum killer, and with that how Solana is VASTLY different from Ethereum. Solana down to its brass tacks is a blockchain-based development tool for web3, Defi, gaming, NFTs, you name it Solana’s got it. Right on their website, you can see the current application processes you can use with Solana, and since we’re in the infancy of blockchain tech, and in Solana’s case particularly is in its infancy with just recently the Solana main-net coming out of beta. The possibilities of Solana are already up to par, if not better depending on who you ask than its competitors in terms of what you can develop, but let's dive into each of these as best we can, without stretching things too long because it could easily be done. With that being said, that means I’m gonna be lightly tapping each of these topics, with a bit more emphasis on the ones that make Solana a killer in the game RIGHT NOW, and then we’ll talk a bit more about why I think Solana’s here to stay.

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First, let’s highlight why Solana is vastly different from Ethereum in how it operates. It’s no more complex than saying, these are just two different types of blockchains. Their end goal is the same, but how they get to that goal is different. The two big names right now Bitcoin and Ethereum are both proof of work blockchains, meaning they require computing power and a community or pool of miners to validate each transaction in the blockchain; Whereas Solana is a proof of stake blockchain, and it uses holders of Solana staking their very own crypto to validate each transaction. What does this mean in terms of the pros and cons when it comes to the real application? Well it’s simple, the computational power that Ethereum miners are using to validate transactions brings with it extremely high gas fees due to high energy costs, and it also severely affects the speed of the transaction because of how much power is required to successfully validate a transaction, and Solana reigns supreme in both of these departments because it virtually has no computational power. Solana also has an unlimited amount of tokens in theory, because it adds to the supply yearly automatically and it adjusts accordingly with inflation, but I suppose someone or something meaning a corporation or even a government could purchase say 51% of the token and have a majority control, however, we’ve seen the same kind of things happen with Bitcoin with giant ASIC mining companies using Airplane hangars full of computers to mine bitcoin, but this is where we see a pro in Ethereum because unlike bitcoin Ethereum has an unlimited supply of tokens, that can be mined, so nobody can truly own 51% of the blockchain… I don't think. But.. yeah, it’s a lot more feasible to own the majority of a proof of work system if it's a fixed amount like bitcoin is, at 21 million. So there is that to keep in mind when you are using a proof of stake setup, even with the annual addition to tokens an entity could potentially control majority ownership in it. It’s a little less decentralized.. but let's delve more into the benefits of Solana, and why developers are seemingly pretty excited about Solana.

The first thing we’ll cover here is the NFT development because I think right now this is easily the biggest marketplace where Solana shines its best and again it’s simple why it’s being competitively compared to Ethereum. Because it is EXTREMELY cheap to mint NFTs on Solana, there are no gas fees being a proof of stake blockchain. There is a downside to this however because since Solanas mint fees are so cheap, it attracts a lot of attention from “rug pull projects” where the creator or creators will hire paid actors, maybe buy some followers on Twitter and some members on discord to make the project look decent to lure in their prey. It happens, and it will continue to happen. it’s just the sad reality of the NFT world right now; the uncertainty is forever present. Aside from this issue, the genuine community building around Solana NFTs is ever seemingly growing at the moment, and I think a big reason for that is a positive note that’s certainly worth mentioning here and that is the fact that Solana NFTs are extremely intuitive to set up, and they're intuitive to start selling, with again very little fees involved, and even fewer fees involved if you choose a more decentralized approach because you can actually set up shop straight through Github if you want and avoid an NFT marketplace altogether. But that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of selections to choose from when it comes to that department with Solana NFTs.

In the gaming department, it does seem to have some work to do, however, it's the biggest attractor right now, Star Atlas seems to be doing pretty well. The fact that its gaming section has some work to do in my mind really means nothing aside from the fact that this blockchain has only been out for roughly 2 years, and that the gaming section, in general, is very lackluster right now I mean you look at the total market cap of just gaming alone, and it’s not even close to saying the likes of what I consider a hype coin-like “Shiba Inu” and this is a discussion for another time. I’m also not hating on Shiba here I’m actually a hodler of it, that is also a discussion for another time. Overall I’ll be honest the benefits of it being involved in gaming are really applying the same to the NFT market right now, because eventually from my understanding of it NFTs and Gaming are hand and hand.

The same benefits really go hand and hand with all of these as I’m sure you can imagine, but I want to mention something from the development side of things, which I will admit my understanding of is very rudimentary but I can say that this is just something you’ll have to pick up on your own. I do watch the community of mostly FREELANCE developers, talk about the wonders of this project and it really seems to get a ton of love. I can also say that I have personally developed my own SPL token, which is like the ERC20 equivalent to Ethereum so say.. like a Shiba Inu token and I’ve attempted it with Solidity and Ethereum in the past and I’ve gotta say going with the Solana route as someone with very little development experience it saved me about 20 bucks worth of ibuprofen for that headache. I may also create a tutorial on how you can create your own SPL token with Solana, and get it registered OFFICIALLY to the Solana mainnet, ready to be liquidated and eventually exchanged! Solana has personally completely changed my perspective on web3 development, like I said as someone who had no development experience being able to make my own cryptocurrency that smoothly was a huge eye-opener, and it made me want to get more involved in the community not only of Solana but crypto in general. This isn’t any sort of advertisement for Solana either, it’s just genuine love for a project, and a tingle in every inch of my body says this project will eventually be a very tough competitor for Ethereum.

Now there is one downside to Solana I forgot to mention, but I also try my best to stay optimistic in situations like this and you’ll understand why. With Solana being fresh out of beta, and it being a fresh project and all, it does encounter some issues from time to time, and here pretty recently their mainnet ran into some malfunctions. So… not everything is perfect, but like I said optimism when things are fresh I think is a good thing, and this really wasn't that huge of a hiccup at least it wasn't weeks, and It hasn’t happened again.

But that’s kind of my overall hypothesis of Solana, and as things get updated and changed along the way and I myself get more involved in development I will be bringing all the knowledge I gain along the way to you guys, and we’ll see where things are at in say a year or two from now. But that’s it for me, today folks, thanks for reading me ramble on about the future of finance. Do your own research of course!

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