Solana can be considered a miracle. You will find that there are very few public blockchains like Solana that rose rapidly, then experienced extreme moments of brilliance, and also endured collective doubt.
It was once called an “Ethereum killer,” and it was once sentenced to “death” because of outages and the collapse of FTX. But in 2024–2025, it once again stood at the center of the stage, becoming one of the most active main battlefields for Meme, DePIN, NFT, PayFi, and AI Agent ecosystems.
What exactly is Solana? Why can it be outrageously fast? And why can it never escape the controversies around “centralization” and “stability”? In this article, we will explain everything clearly in one go.
Solana Explained Clearly in One Sentence
Solana is a Layer 1 public blockchain whose core design goal is “extreme performance first.” To put it in even more straightforward terms: what Solana wants to be is a Layer 1 public blockchain that is as fast as Web2, but still runs on blockchain infrastructure.
It was not born for “store of value.” From the very beginning, it targeted heavy scenarios such as high-frequency trading, payments, and large-scale on-chain application execution.
Solana’s “Speed” Is Not About TPS, but About the “Extremeness” of Its Architectural Choices
When many people talk about Solana, they always end up focusing on one number: TPS is very high, at the level of hundreds of thousands or even millions. But if you only stare at TPS, you are actually underestimating Solana’s real value, and also misunderstanding the source of its controversies.
The essence of Solana is not “slightly optimizing performance,” but making a complete set of architectural trade-offs at the blockchain base layer that are entirely different from Ethereum.
What it pursues is not “finding a balance between decentralization, performance, and security,” but making a clear choice: performance first, and then using engineering methods to backstop the other issues.
1. Proof of History: Taking “Time” Out of Consensus
In most blockchains, “time” itself is an extremely costly thing, because nodes do not know who saw a transaction first. They can only rely on:
continuous communication
repeated reconciliation
multiple rounds of voting
to confirm transaction ordering.
Solana’s Proof of History does something very counterintuitive: it no longer lets the entire network negotiate time. Instead, it generates an unfalsifiable timeline in advance. Through a Verifiable Delay Function (VDF), it continuously produces a hash chain, where each hash naturally represents that a certain amount of time has already passed.
What does this mean?
Once a transaction enters the network, it can be “pinned” to a specific point in time. Validators only need to verify whether the order is correct, rather than renegotiating the order. This dramatically reduces the communication complexity at the consensus layer.
This step is not “speeding up consensus,” but reducing the amount of work that consensus itself needs to do.
So Solana is fast not because nodes are more diligent, but because it makes nodes do much less work.
2. Sealevel Parallel Execution: Not a Faster EVM, but “Not EVM”
Solana’s second core component is the Sealevel parallel execution engine.
In the EVM world, most transaction logic is implicit: contracts decide by themselves which state they read and write, and nodes can only execute transactions sequentially to avoid state conflicts. This leads to one result: even if two transactions are completely unrelated, they still have to queue.
Solana instead requires transactions to “declare first, then execute.” Transactions must declare in advance which accounts they will read and which accounts they will write. Validators can determine conflicts ahead of time, and if there is no conflict, transactions can be executed in parallel.
This allows Solana to truly utilize modern servers’ multi-core CPUs, instead of only using a small portion of computing power like traditional blockchains.
This is also why Solana is particularly suitable for:
high-frequency DEXs
order books
on-chain matching
real-time games and payments
It does not treat the blockchain as merely a “settlement layer,” but attempts to treat it as a high-performance state machine.
3. Trading Hardware for Performance: This Is a Design Choice, Not a Technical Flaw
Solana’s biggest point of controversy is actually very simple: high node requirements — high bandwidth, high memory, high IO, and high compute power. This directly leads to:
slower growth in the number of validator nodes
difficulty for ordinary users to run nodes themselves
it being more easily questioned as “centralized”
But one thing must be distinguished clearly: is this an “unavoidable compromise,” or an “active choice”?
The Solana team’s logic has always been very clear: hardware will continue to improve, while software bottlenecks are extremely difficult to break. Rather than limiting the upper bound in order to accommodate low-performance devices, it is better to raise the upper bound directly and run the network at the real-world limits of hardware.
You may disagree with this path, but it is not laziness. It is an extremely aggressive engineering decision.
4. In Summary, Solana’s Speed Comes From Three Things
Using PoH to reduce consensus communication costs
Using Sealevel to achieve true parallel execution
Using hardware specifications in exchange for system throughput
The costs are equally obvious:
higher operational complexity
stricter engineering stability requirements
extreme sensitivity to clients, networks, and synchronization mechanisms
This is also why Solana experienced multiple outages in its early stages. This was not a design failure, but rather problems being exposed earlier under extreme conditions.
Solana’s True Positioning: Not Ethereum 2.0, but On-Chain Web2
If Solana must be given an accurate positioning, it is more like a “high-performance application platform” in the blockchain world, rather than a financial settlement layer.
What does this mean?
it is more suitable for large user bases and high-frequency interaction
it is more suitable for Meme, NFT, payments, and DePIN
it does not pursue extreme decentralization
it accepts a certain degree of engineering compromise
This is completely different from Ethereum’s philosophy, but it does not conflict with it.
Solana’s Explosion Was Not Driven by VC, but by “Real Usage”
Some people ask why the Solana ecosystem was able to explode again in 2024–2025. In fact, many people overlook one point: Solana’s explosion was not driven by VC, but by real usage.
1. Memes Brought Real Transaction Volume
low gas fees
second-level confirmation
retail-user friendly
These factors made Solana the most natural breeding ground for Memes. Many Memes are not “high-end,” but they brought real on-chain transaction volume, fees, and active addresses.
2. NFTs Shifted From “Art” to “Consumer-Grade Applications”
The advantages of Solana NFTs lie in:
extremely low minting costs
user experience close to Web2
better suitability for large-scale issuance
This allows NFTs to no longer remain mere collectibles, but begin evolving toward consumer-grade applications such as:
tickets
memberships
in-game assets
3. PayFi and Stablecoin Transfer Scenarios
USDC and USDT transfers on Solana are:
almost imperceptible
extremely low cost
excellent in user experience
In emerging markets, Solana has in practice already taken on part of the role of payment infrastructure.
Unavoidable Controversies: Talking About Solana Cannot Only Focus on the Positive Side
❌ Outage history
Solana has repeatedly experienced:
network congestion
block production halts
validator restarts
For “financial-grade infrastructure,” these are serious flaws.
❌ High validator threshold
high hardware costs
high degree of specialization
relatively concentrated validator distribution
This has long caused Solana to be questioned in terms of its degree of decentralization.
❌ Strong engineering orientation rather than extreme security orientation
Solana’s choice is essentially: get applications running first, then talk about perfect security. This is an engineering philosophy, not a mistake, but it is not something everyone can accept.
Conclusion: Solana’s Value Lies in the Fact That It Is Truly Being “Used”
In the crypto industry, many narratives exist only in PPT slides, while Solana’s value is reflected more in on-chain data. It is not perfect, but it is real, aggressive, and efficient.
For developers, it is a tool;
for users, it is an experience;
for the market, it is a choice.
And choice itself is the most important meaning of the crypto world.
