Solana

Timeline of Solana. An overview of how Solana grew from nothing to one of the largest crypto coins. Solana is the fastest blockchain in the world and the fastest-growing ecosystem in crypto, with over 400 projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and more.

31 October 2017

30 November 2017

31 December 2017

12 February 2018

27 February 2018

27 April 2018

17 June 2018

29 July 2019

29 February 2020

5 May 2020

25 March 2021

14 September 2021 at 19:11

24 October 2021

15 December 2021

31 January 2022

4 February 2022

28 March 2022

13 June 2022

22 June 2022

21 September 2022

5 November 2022

12 January 2023

12 April 2023

18 April 2023

25 June 2024

27 June 2024

31October
2017
31 October 2017

Publication paper

In November of 2017, Anatoly Yakovenko published a whitepaper describing Proof of History, a technique for keeping time between computers that do not trust one another. From Anatoly's previous experience designing distributed systems at Qualcomm, Mesosphere and Dropbox, he knew that a reliable clock makes network synchronization very simple. When synchronization is simple the resulting network can be blazing fast, bound only by network bandwidth.

30November
2017
30 November 2017

New blockchain technique

Anatoly watched as blockchain systems without clocks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, struggled to scale beyond 15 transactions per second worldwide when centralized payment systems such as Visa required peaks of 65,000 tps. Without a clock, it was clear they'd never graduate to being the global payment system or global supercomputer most had dreamed them to be. When Anatoly solved the problem of getting computers that don’t trust each other to agree on time, he knew he had the key to bring 40 years of distributed systems research to the world of blockchain. The resulting cluster wouldn't be just 10 times faster, or a 100 times, or a 1,000 times, but 10,000 times faster, right out of the gate!

31December
2017
31 December 2017

Greg Fitzgerald

Anatoly's implementation began in a private codebase and was implemented in the C programming language. Greg Fitzgerald, who had previously worked with Anatoly at semiconductor giant Qualcomm Incorporated, encouraged him to reimplement the project in the Rust programming language. Greg had worked on the LLVM compiler infrastructure, which underlies both the Clang C/C++ compiler as well as the Rust compiler. Greg claimed that the language's safety guarantees would improve software productivity and that its lack of a garbage collector would allow programs to perform as well as those written in C. Anatoly gave it a shot and just two weeks later, had migrated his entire codebase to Rust. Sold. With plans to weave all the world's transactions together on a single, scalable blockchain, Anatoly called the project Loom.

12February
2018
12 February 2018

First prototype

On February 13th of 2018, Greg began prototyping the first open source implementation of Anatoly's whitepaper. The project was published to GitHub under the name Silk in the loomprotocol organization. On February 28th, Greg made his first release, demonstrating 10 thousand signed transactions could be verified and processed in just over half a second. Shortly after, another former Qualcomm cohort, Stephen Akridge, demonstrated throughput could be massively improved by offloading signature verification to graphics processors. Anatoly recruited Greg, Stephen and three others to co-found a company, then called Loom.

27February
2018
27 February 2018

Loom rebranded to Solana

Around the same time, Ethereum-based project Loom Network sprung up and many people were confused about whether they were the same project. The Loom team decided it would rebrand. They chose the name Solana, a nod to a small beach town North of San Diego called Solana Beach, where Anatoly, Greg and Stephen lived and surfed for three years when they worked for Qualcomm. On March 28th, the team created the Solana GitHub organization and renamed Greg's prototype Silk to Solana.

27April
2018
27 April 2018

Elevator pitch at Xoogler Demo Day

In April of 2018, Alan the business developer of Solana, gave a pitch session at Google Headquarters in San Francisco.

17June
2018
17 June 2018

Testing transaction speed

In June of 2018, the team scaled up the technology to run on cloud-based networks and on July 19th, published a 50-node, permissioned, public testnet consistently supporting bursts of 250,000 transactions per second. In a later release in December, called v0.10 Pillbox, the team published a permissioned testnet running 150 nodes on a gigabit network and demonstrated soak tests processing an average of 200 thousand transactions per second with bursts over 500 thousand. The project was also extended to support on-chain programs written in the C programming language and run concurrently in a safe execution environment called BPF.

29July
2019
29 July 2019

Solana raises $20M

Between Apr. 2018 and Jul. 2019, the team raised a little over $20 million in various private token sales. They announced the sales as a single Series A in late-July 2019.

29February
2020
29 February 2020

Launch Mainnet Beta

Solana launched on Mainnet Beta in Mar. 2020, shortly after raising $1.76 million in a public token auction hosted on CoinList. The project's beta network featured basic transaction capabilities and smart contract support. But it did not include any staking rewards as Solana was still determining its ongoing issuance schedule. The current plan is to upgrade from its current beta stage to a more production-ready version in either later 2020 or early 2021.

05May
2020
05 May 2020

Explaning proof of history

The core Solana innovation is Proof of History (POH), a globally-available, permissionless source of time in the network that works before consensus. POH is not a consensus protocol or anti-Sybil mechanism. Rather, POH is a solution to the clock problem.

25March
2021
25 March 2021

First NFT project minted

Kreechures are Solana's first crypto-collectible NFT RPG. Built on #Solana. Achievements fueled by $Kin. 1st Mint: March 26th, 2021.

14September
2021
14 September 2021

Solana network goes down after reaching 400K transactions

 

24October
2021
24 October 2021

Solana reaches all time high

On October 25, 2021, Solana (SOL) reached an all-time high, surpassing $219. This surge was part of a wider bullish trend in the crypto market. Despite a network outage in September, Solana showed strong recovery and increased interest in its platform, especially in decentralized finance (DeFi). Its high transaction speed and low fees contributed to its growth, with its Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi also hitting new highs​​​​​​​​.

15December
2021
<h2>Melania Trump plans to launch NFTs on Solana</h2>
15 December 2021

Melania Trump plans to launch NFTs on Solana

On December 16, 2021, former US First Lady Melania Trump announced plans to use the platform to launch non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The Solana Foundation issued a press release clarifying that her choice of the platform was not “part of any Solana-led initiative.

31January
2022
31 January 2022

Solana Pay

Solana introduces Solana Pay, a new payment technology that will enable consumers and merchant to benefit from web3. With this development Solana takes a step further in the payment industry. Previously PayPal was showing interest. Paypal’s senior vice president Jose Fernandez da Ponte said the company is tracking cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot and Algorand. However he also concluded that this could change quickly but that makes this development so interesting.

04February
2022
04 February 2022

Solana hackathon

Solana launches Hackathon to accelerate development on SOL network.

28March
2022
28 March 2022

Solana and OpenSea Join Forces

After months of rumors, OpenSea finally confirmed that they will start listing Solana NFT on their platform. See the below the announcement on Twitter.

13June
2022
13 June 2022

Improvement Solana network

22June
2022
22 June 2022

Solana Mobile Stack

After weeks of rumors Solana Foundation reveals Solana Mobile Stack or also known as SMS. With this announcement Solana will bring crypto to mobile and open a new eco system for web 3 to thrive.

21September
2022
21 September 2022

Helium Community Approves Crypto Wireless Network's Migration to Solana

The Solana blockchain will be used to move Helium's own custom Layer 1 blockchain, which enables the wireless communication protocols used by thousands of individual users.

 

The network currently contains more than 950,000 nodes, or hotspots, with operators being rewarded with cryptocurrency tokens. The network was initially focused on powering Internet of Things (IoT) devices like sensors and trackers.

05November
2022
05 November 2022

Google Cloud Collaborates With Solana

Google Cloud announced that the platform has decided to establish itself as a Solana validator. Solana’s native token SOL had a sudden surge by almost 15%, with a current price of nearly $40, following Google Cloud’s announcement that it has decided to launch a block-producing Solana validator and thus establish itself as a Solana validator.

The cloud computing platform tweeted on November 5, that the platform is launching a block-producing Solana validator:

 

 

12January
2023
12 January 2023

Austin Federa head of Solana strategy on Bloomberg

Austin Federa, Solana Head of Strategy gives interview on Bloomberg about the plans for 2023.

12April
2023
12 April 2023

SAGA Solana Mobile launched

About 10 months ago, Solana’s co-founder and CEO, Anatoly Yakovenko, announced the launch of Saga, a web3-focused Android smartphone. The phone is now being rolled out, and we got to test one ahead of its launch.

 

Solana says Saga was launched to make crypto products and services more accessible for users by offering them through a phone instead of the traditional way of accessing crypto platforms and applications, which is via computers.

18April
2023
18 April 2023

Helium Successfully Completes Migration to Solana Network

Crypto-based wireless network project Helium has completely separated from its layer-1 network after a long process. In a statement today, officials emphasized that the Helium ecosystem will now be shaped on the Solana blockchain.

 

25June
2024
25 June 2024

Solana Launches Blinks

Solana has officially launched Blinks, a revolutionary feature that enables users to initiate blockchain transactions directly on the social media platform X. This innovative integration allows for seamless interaction between social media and blockchain technology, streamlining the process of conducting transactions.

Blinks are now live on several major platforms, including:

  • Jupiter Exchange: A leading decentralized exchange on Solana, offering instant trading of Solana tokens.
  • Sanctum: A platform dedicated to providing secure and private blockchain transactions.
  • Tensor: Known for its high-performance blockchain solutions, Tensor HQ integrates Blinks for enhanced user experience.
  • Helium: A decentralized network for IoT devices, now leveraging Blinks to facilitate efficient and secure transactions.

This launch marks a significant milestone in the blockchain industry, further demonstrating Solana's commitment to innovation and user accessibility.

 
27June
2024
<h2>VanEck Files for Solana ETF, SOL Rises 8%</h2>
27 June 2024

VanEck Files for Solana ETF, SOL Rises 8%

The filing is the first Solana ETF to be filed in the U.S. and follows six days after a similar product filing in Canada. Read more

VanEck Files for Solana ETF, SOL Rises 8%

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