Solana's Turbulent Past Paves Way for Faster, Cheaper Transactions

The Solana network has come a long way since its inception in 2017. Founder Anatoly Yakovenko published the whitepaper for proof of history, a cryptographic clock that allows computers to agree on the order of events without constant messaging.

This concept is based on validators, which check transactions, produce blocks, and keep the blockchain running. The shared clock enables them to work faster together.

The mainnet beta went live in March 2020, but the early years were marked by outages during traffic spikes. The network struggled with bot-driven transactions exposing weak spots in how validators handled incoming traffic.

To address these issues, validator connection capacity was increased and stake-weighted quality of service (SWQoS) was added, giving priority to traffic sent through validators with more stake.

The network has since undergone significant upgrades, including a scheduler redesign that made duplicates pointless. The current uptime streak is 100% since February 2024, although this is a project claim and not independently verified.