About

Solana is a Layer-1 blockchain network that provides infrastructure for decentralized applications, emphasizing high throughput, low transaction costs, and support for LLVM-compatible smart contracts. It is designed to minimize performance constraints typically faced by developers.

History

Solana's origins date back to late 2017 when Anatoly Yakovenko published a whitepaper draft detailing a new timekeeping technique for distributed systems called Proof-of-History (PoH), a method to automate blockchain transaction ordering to deliver fast transaction speeds and settlement times. Anatoly teamed up with former Qualcomm colleague Greg Fitzgerald, and the two released the first internal testnet and project Whitepaper in February 2018. Another former Qualcomm cohort, Stephen Akridge, suggested that offloading signature verification to graphics processors could further increase transaction throughput (i.e., scalability). Anatoly recruited Greg, Stephen, and three others to start the company that would eventually become Solana Labs, Inc. The founding team initially named the project “Loom” but later rebranded to Solana to avoid confusion with the sidechain scaling solution, Loom Network.

Notably, Alan Yu was one of Solana Labs, Inc.’s Co-Founders. However, based on a commercially reasonable search, he is no longer involved with the entity.

Source: History of Solana

Solana Labs, Inc. first raised funds between April 2018 and July 2019, accumulating over $20.00 million in various private token sales. The sales were announced as a single Series A in late July 2019. The fundraising effort ran parallel to Solana Labs, Inc.'s work on the network, which went through several permissioned testnet phases before the project team announced its publicly incentivized testnet, Tour de SOL, in Q3 2020.

Solana launched on Mainnet Beta in March 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 did not initially include staking rewards.

Other significant events in the protocol’s history include:

• March 2021: Kreechures is the first NFT collection launched on Solana.
• January 2022: Solana Pay is announced.
• February 2022: Solana Riptide Hackathon launches.
• March 2022: Solana NFTs are supported on OpenSea.
• June 2022: Solana Mobile Stack (SMS) is announced.
• November 2022: Google Cloud announces it is running a block-producing validator on Solana.
• December 2022: Squads Protocol, a multi-signature standard on Solana, brought account abstraction to Solana.
• April 2023: The Solana mobile phone, “Saga,” was released.
• July 2023: Solana Labs launches Solang, a compiler that allows developers to write smart contracts on the Solana platform using Solidity.
• August 2023 - Solana Pay integrates with Shopify, allowing merchants to accept USDC on Solana as payment.
• September 2023 - Visa expands its settlement capabilities to Solana for stablecoin settlements.
• October 2023 - Google Cloud introduces its Blockchain Node Engine for Solana.
• December 2023 - The Saga mobile phone sold out worldwide.
• December 2023 - Circle launched native support for the EURC stablecoin on Solana.
• January 2024 - Chapter Two of Saga Smartphone sales began with $450.00 preorders.
• February 2024 - Game Shift exited its beta phase with the launch of in-game marketplaces and asset imports.
• April 2024: The Solana Foundation partnered with Amazon Web Services to deploy Solana nodes on AWS Cloud via the Node Runner app.

According to Coindesk By mid‑2025, Solana emerged as a fully institutionalized blockchain ecosystem. Following the success of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, Solana exchange‑traded products (ETPs and ETFs) gained strong regulatory traction and widespread investor interest across North America, Europe, and Asia.