KoinlyticsSolana bet the opposite direction from Ethereum. Instead of scaling out with rollups, it built a monolithic chain that runs as fast as top-tier hardware allows. As of 2026 it is settling more transactions per day than Ethereum L1 and every major L2 combined.
Proof of History is not consensus
PoH is a verifiable delay function that timestamps events before consensus runs. The leader stamps a sequence of hashes and puts transactions between them. Validators can verify the ordering without agreeing on it. This lets Solana skip a lot of the back-and-forth that PoS chains normally need to agree on order.
Four pillars of throughput
- Turbine shards block propagation so validators only forward fragments.
- Gulf Stream forwards transactions to the next known leader before the current one finishes.
- Sealevel executes non-conflicting transactions in parallel.
- Proof of History pre-orders transactions cheaply.
What you actually pay and get
Median transaction fee: ~$0.0002. Confirmation: ~400ms. Peak sustained TPS: 65,000+ during high-activity periods.
Where it breaks
Solana has had multiple full network halts, some lasting several hours. Reasons range from transaction spam overwhelming the leader to validator client bugs. The introduction of QUIC and stake-weighted QoS reduced spam impact. The next Firedancer client (Jump Trading) is expected to remove a single-implementation risk.
The trade-off, plainly
Solana requires validator hardware in the tens of thousands of dollars range. That is a fraction of what a Bitcoin mining rig costs, but far more than an Ethereum home staker's setup. In exchange you get finality in one block and fees so low they let use cases like Jito's MEV auctions and Kamino's constant rebalancing exist economically.