---
title: What is Solana?
metaTitle: What is Solana? | Guides
description: What is Solana and why would you want to build on it.
# remember to update dates also in /components/guides/index.js
created: '06-16-2024'
updated: '06-21-2024'
---

# Solana Overview

The Solana blockchain is a high-performance, decentralized blockchain platform designed to enable scalable and user-friendly applications. Launched in 2020 by Solana Labs, Solana aims to address the limitations of earlier blockchain networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, particularly in terms of scalability, speed, and cost.

## Key Features and Innovations

1. **High Throughput:**
   Solana can process thousands of transactions per second (TPS), significantly higher than many other blockchain platforms. This high throughput is achieved through its unique architecture and consensus mechanisms.

2. **Proof of History (PoH):**
   Solana introduces Proof of History, a novel timestamping method that orders transactions and events cryptographically. PoH reduces the workload of the consensus algorithm, allowing for greater scalability and efficiency.

3. **Tower BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance):**
   Solana uses a variation of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) called Tower BFT. This consensus mechanism is optimized for PoH and ensures the security and reliability of the network.

4. **Sealevel:**
   Solana features Sealevel, a parallel smart contract runtime that allows it to process thousands of smart contracts simultaneously. This enables greater performance and scalability for decentralized applications (dApps).

5. **Gulf Stream:**
   Solana employs Gulf Stream, a transaction forwarding protocol that significantly reduces confirmation times and improves the overall network throughput by enabling validators to execute transactions ahead of time.

6. **Pipeline and Turbine:**
   Pipeline and Turbine are mechanisms for data propagation and processing. Pipeline improves transaction validation efficiency, while Turbine is a block propagation protocol that enhances the speed and reliability of data transmission across the network.

7. **Low Costs:**
   Solana offers low transaction fees, making it an attractive option for developers and users looking to build and interact with dApps and DeFi platforms without the high costs associated with other blockchains.

   ## Upcoming
   
   In addition to what is already a performant chain Solana is advancing with new developments like Runtime v2, which aims to improve transaction processing and a simplified developer experience for everyone.
