jakiro
Summarize
Solana is a high -performance blockchain platform that uses a unique technical architecture to achieve high throughput and low latency.Its core technologies include the PROOF of History (POH) algorithm to ensure the transaction order and global clock, the Leader Rotation Schedule and the Tower BFT consensus mechanism to increase the block rate.The Turbine mechanism optimizes large block transmission through Reed-Solomon encoding.Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) and Sealevel parallel execution engines to speed up transaction execution.These are the design of high -performance architecture for Solana, but at the same time, they also bring some problems, such as network downtime, transaction failure, MEV problems, excessive status growth, and centralized problems. We also focus on this mechanism in this article.Bringing problems.
Solana’s ecology is developing rapidly, and various data indicators have developed rapidly in the first half of the year, especially in DEFI, infrastructure, GameFi/NFT, DEPIN/AI, and consumer applications.Solana’s high TPS and consumer applications, as well as the weak ecological environment of the brand effect, provide rich entrepreneurial opportunities for entrepreneurs and developers.In terms of consumer applications, Solana shows its vision for promoting the application of blockchain technology in a wider range.By supporting SDK for consumer applications such as Solana Mobile and dedicated to consumer applications, Solana is committed to integrating blockchain technology into daily applications, thereby improving user acceptance and convenience.For example, applications such as Stepn provide users with novel fitness and social experiences by combining blockchain and mobile technology.Although many consumer applications are still exploring the best business models and market positioning, the support of technical platforms and ecosystems provided by Solana will undoubtedly provide strong backing for these innovation attempts.With the further development of technology and the maturity of the market, Solana is expected to achieve more breakthroughs and successful cases in the field of consumer applications.
Although Solana has won a significant market share in the blockchain industry for its high throughput and low transaction costs, it also faces fierce competition from other emerging public chains.As a potential opponent in the EVM ecosystem, the number of active addresses on the chain is growing rapidly. At the same time, although the total locking volume (TVL) of Solana’s DEFI field has reached a record high, competitors such as BASE are also rapidly occupying market share rapidly in market shareThe financing amount of Base ecology also surpassed Solana for the first time in the Q2 quarter.
Although Solana has achieved certain achievements in technology and market acceptance, it needs to continue to innovate and improve to deal with challenges from competitors such as Base.In particular, in terms of improving network stability, reducing transaction failure rate, solving the MEV problem, and slowing status growth rate, Solana needs to continue to optimize its technical structure and network protocol to maintain its leading position in the blockchain industry.
Technical architecture
Solana is known for its POH algorithm, TOWER BFT consensus mechanism, and high TPS and fast finality brought by the Trubine data transmission network and SVM virtual machine.We will briefly introduce how each component works, how to exert its high -performance goals for architecture design, and the disadvantages and derivatives brought about by this architecture design.
POH algorithm
POH (Proof of History) is a technology that determines the overall time. It is not a consensus mechanism, but an algorithm that determines the transaction order.POH technology is the most basic cryptography SHA 256 technology.SHA 256 is usually used to calculate the integrity of the data. Given a input X, there is only the only output Y, so any change in the X will cause y to be completely different.
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POH sequence, picture source: solana white paper
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POH sequence schematic diagram, picture source: solana white paper
In the POH sequence of Solana, through the application of the SHA 256 algorithm, the integrity of the entire sequence can be ensured, and the integrity of the transaction can be determined.For example, if we pack the transaction into a block and generate the corresponding SHA 256 hash value, then the transaction in this block will be determined, and any change will cause the hash value to change.The next SHA 256 function is part of the Hash of the next block, then the previous block and the next block are determined, and any change will cause the new Y difference.
This is the core meaning of its Proof of History technology. The previous block hash will be part of the next SHA 256 function, similar to a chain, the latest Y, always contains historical proof.
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Trading Flow architecture diagram, picture source: solana white paper
In the Solana’s transaction stream architecture, the transaction process under the POH mechanism describes the transaction process under the POH mechanism. Under a rotation mechanism called Leader Rotation Schedule, a leader node will be generated in all chain verifications, the leader node collectionThe transaction is performed and executed, and the POH sequence is generated, and then a block will be generated to other nodes.
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Leader election mechanism, source: helius
In order to avoid single -point failures at the leader node, time limit was introduced.In Solana, the unit is divided by Epoch. Each EPOCH contains 432 and 000 slots (time slot). Each slot lasts 400 ms. In each slot, the rotation system will allocate a leader node in each slot.The Leader node must publish the block (400 ms) within a given Slot time, otherwise, this slot will be skipped and re -elected the next Slot Leader node.
In general, the Leader node adopts the POH mechanism to make all historical transactions determine.The basic time unit of Solana is Slot, and the Leader node needs to broadcast the block in a slot.The user gives the transaction through the RPC node to the Leader, the leader node packaging transaction sort and then executed the generated block, the block spreads to other verifiedrs, the verifier needs to reach a consensus through a mechanism, and to reach consensus on the transaction and order in the block.The consensus uses the Tower BFT consensus mechanism.
TOWER BFT consensus mechanism
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TOWER BFT protocol, source: helius
The Tower BFT consensus agreement comes from the BFT consensus algorithm, which is a specific project implementation. The algorithm is still related to the POH algorithm.When voting for the block, if the voting of the verificationr is a transaction itself, then the block hash formed by the user transaction and the verifier’s exchange can also be used as a historical proof.The details of the voting can be confirmed.
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Voting icon
In the Tower BFT algorithm, if all verifications vote for the block, more than 2/3 verificationers vote for the APPROVE ticket, then this block can be determined.The advantage of this mechanism is to save a lot of memory because you only need to vote for the hash sequence to confirm the block.However, in the traditional consensus mechanism, block flood is generally used, that is, an authenticator receives the block and then sends it to the surrounding verifications.It’s not just the same block.
In Solana, due to a large number of verificationrs voting and trading, and due to the efficiency brought by the centralization of the Leader node, and the 400 MS slot time, this has led to the overall block size and the frequency of the outlet.When spreading, it will also cause a lot of pressure on the network. Solana uses the Turbine mechanism to solve the problem of dissemination of large blocks.
Turbine
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Turbine block communication mechanism, source: helius
Leader nodes split the block into SHRD sub -blocks through a process called Sharding.The maximum data volume) is unit.Then use the Reed-Solomon erase code scheme to ensure the integrity and availability of the data.
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Reed-Solomon encoding scheme, source: Helius
By dividing the block into four data shreds, and then in order to prevent packet loss and damage during the data transmission process, the four packages are encoded into eight packages with Reed-Solomon coding.EssenceIn the actual test, the packet loss rate of Solana is about 15%, so this solution can be well compatible with the current Solana architecture.
In the underlying data transmission, the UDP/ TCP protocol is generally considered. Due to the high tolerance of the packet loss rate of Solana, the UDP protocol is used for transmission.It lies in faster transmission rates.On the contrary, the TCP agreement will be transmitted multiple times when losing the package, which will greatly reduce the transmission rate and throughput. After the Reed-Solomon, this solution can significantly increase the throughput of Solana. In the real environment, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughput, throughputThe amount can be increased by 9 times.
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Stagger dissemination schematic diagram, source source: Helius
After Turbine uses the data sharding, use the multi -layer communication mechanism to spread. The Leader node will give the block to any block verification person before each slot ends, and then the verified person will size the block into shreds, and the verified person will be sized into shreds.And generate the default code, the verified as the Turbine dissemination will be turned on.First of all, it is necessary to spread to the root node, and then the node will determine which verifications are located on the first layer.The process is as follows:
1. Create a list of nodes: The root node summarizes all active authenticists into a list, and then sortedFloor, push and so on.
2. Node packet: Then each verification person in the first layer will also create a list of nodes of the term to build its own first layer.
3. Formation: The node is divided into layers from the top of the list. By determining the two values of depth and breadth, the general shape of the entire tree can be determined. This parameter will affect the spread rate of shreds.
The nodes with a relatively high equity. When the level is divided, at the higher level, you can get the complete shreds in advance. At this time, you can restore the complete block.The probability of shreds will be reduced. If these shreds are not enough to build a complete fragments, the leader will be required to be transmitted directly.Then the data transmission will be carried out inside the tree, and the node on the first layer has long built a complete block confirmation. The longer the verifier of the subsequent level of the subsequent level, the longer the voting time after completing the block construction.
The idea of this mechanism is similar to the single node mechanism of the Leader node.There are also some priority nodes in the process of block communication. These nodes first obtained the SHREDS fragments to form a complete block to reach the process of voting consensus.Pushing redundancy to deeper levels can significantly speed up the progress of finality and maximize throughput and efficiency.Because in fact, the first few layers may represent 2/3 nodes, so the voting of subsequent nodes is irrelevant.
SVM
Solana can handle thousands of transactions per second, the main reason is its POH mechanism, TOWER BFT consensus, and Turbine data communication mechanism.However, SVM is a virtual machine with a state conversion. If the Leader node is performed slowly during the transaction execution, the SVM processing speed is slower, then the throughput of the entire system will be reduced. Therefore, for SVM, Solana proposes the Sealevel parallel execution engine to speed up the transaction transaction.Speed.
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Sealevel executes a schematic in parallel, source: XANGLE
In SVM, the instruction consists of 4 parts, including program ID, program instructions, and account lists for reading/writing data.By determining whether the current account is in the read or write status, and whether there is a conflict between the operation of the state change, you can make the state without conflicting the state in the transaction instructions of the account. Each instruction can be represented by the Program ID.And this is one of the reason why Solana’s verifications are very high, because the GPU/CPU required by the verification to support SIMD (single instruction multi -data) and AVX advanced vector expansion capabilities.
Ecological development
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Solana Ecological Landscape, source: Gate Ventures
In the current process of Solana’s ecological development, it is increasingly biased towards actual utility, such as Blinks and Actions and even Solana Mobile.Infinitely rolled.In the case of Solana’s current performance, the application types are more abundant.As far as Taifang is concerned, because its TPS is low, the Ethereum ecology is still mainly based on infrastructure and capacity expansion technology. When infrastructure cannot carry applications, it is not possible to build consumers.It has caused too much investment in infrastructure, but the imbalance of application investment.
Defi
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DEFI LANDSCAPE, Source: Gate Ventures
In the DEFI protocol on Solana, there are a large number of unsurprised items, including Kamino (first Lending), Marginfi (Leending + RESTAKING), Solay (RESTAKING), Meteora, etc. Due to Solana’s united ecological atmosphere, a project is usually a project in.For the issue of the issue of the issuing coin, other items will avoid as much as possible to attract enough market attention.
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DEX market share, source: dune
At present, it is fierce in the entire DEX, and its leader has also experienced many migration. From Raydium, ORCA to now Jupiter is the leading position.
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The initiator of DEX transaction, picture source: dune
It is worth noting that about 50%of the DEX transactions are initiated by MEV BOT, mainly because its low costs and MEME transactions actively breed MEV’s favorable map.And this is one of the main reasons that lead to frequent and downturn in the failure of user peak transactions.
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Solana tvl, source: DEFILLAMA
The DEFI protocol on Solana is accompanied by the rise of SOL prices, and its USD nominal TVL has also won explosive rise.The trend of its TVL rising still has not stopped, and a new wave of upward trend has formed.
In short, although the Solana track is fiercely competitive, it still changes. Unlike the UNISWAP on Ethereum, the user’s brand mentality is that, although DEX, which should have been very viscous and network effect, will also face the risk of being replaced.The transaction of Solana’s main chain is filled with MEV BOT, which still needs to be resolved to the problems of users’ user experience.In the overall large direction, Solana’s TVL is still growing very rapidly. The subsequent Defi ecological development is still worth looking forward to, and the brand mentality of these applications is not strong to users, which is the potential driving force for entrepreneurs to choose chains.
Inclastic
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Infrastructure LANDSCAPE, source: Gate Ventures
In the construction of infrastructure, the main leader is the prophet Pyth and the cross -chain bridge Wormhole. It also includes some targeted solutions. The public may know less, such as:
1. Jito Labs: Focusing on building a MEV solution on Solana, its Jito Labs client builds Bundle and pseudo -emempool to give Researchers for MEV.Its market share is currently exceeding 50%.In addition, the pledged SOL of the LSD protocol JITO is also close to 12 million, and it is still growing at high speed.
2. Helius: Helius, as an active contribution community on Solana, has the most comprehensive research on Solana and contributes code through research.
3. Genesysgo: Its product SHDWDRIVE is a data storage project in Solana, which is committed to commercial support for commercialization, including social data, website hosting and other businesses.It is still in the test network stage.At the same time, its parent company GeNESYSGO is also building a variety of Public Goods and research for the Solana community.
In addition, Solana still has a large number of projects worth exploring waiting for the Chinese community to dig.We did find that these infrastructures have a huge influence in the construction of the agreement level, ecological development, and communities in Solana. There may be opportunities for investment or cooperation to further tap their potential.
Gaming / nft
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Gaming / nft Landscape, source: Gate Ventures
There are also rich Gamefi and NFT ecosystems on Solana. Among them, Mad Labs occupies a more important position in the entire Solana ecosystem. Many project airdrops will give priority to the distribution of MAD LABS holders. In the past, the position of this leader was DEGODS.The NFT market has also undergone changes. In the past, most people used Magic Eden and now transformed into Tensor.
DEPIN / AI
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Depin landscape, source: Gate Ventures
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DEPIN data overview, source: depin scan
Currently in the DEPIN market of Solana, Render is a well -deserved leader with actual business.Along with Solana’s development strategy centered on the actual application, it also seized the style of DEPIN’s narrative in this round of recovery.In the first half of the year, a large number of new DEPIN projects were built on Solana, including IO.NET, Nosana, Shadow, etc.
Consumer
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Consumer Landscape, source: Gate Ventures
Whether it is Solana Mobile, or Solana Ecosystem’s official website specially builds a column for consumer applications, the invention of Actions and Blinks all illustrates the vision of SOLANA for blockchain commercialization and practicality.The release of MOBILE is also placing the web -side DAPP on the mobile terminal, which is very in line with humanity and Internet development trend.Therefore, it is easy to explode on this soil, the most typical is Stepn.
Overview of consumer applications currently running, in fact, most of them still have not found a good breakthrough, so it is still impossible to achieve a real application to the business world, which includes product innovation single, single business model, weaker marketing for web2 2, GAS FEE’s demand, token entry threshold and other factors.
However, consumer applications are the final scene of blockchain technology, and also determines the ceiling of the public chain.Therefore, SLANA’s exploration of mobile phone consumer applications is very necessary, and we are also necessary for long -term mining in this direction.Especially in the current Ethereum ecology, infrastructure is far greater than applications.In the end, the infrastructure serves the application.
Payments
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Payment LandScape, source: Gate Ventures
The wallets on Solana include Phantom, Backpack, Tiplink, etc.Like DEX, the brand effect here is not strong, so entrepreneurs have more opportunities. In the past, the faucet of the wallet was Phantom, and now it is transformed into backpack.NFT faucet.
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Solana stable currency issuance status, source: DEFILLAMA
It currently cooperates with Paypal, Visa, etc. to carry out stable coins on the chain. The business scenario itself is very conducive to fast finality and low Gas Fee’s Solana chain.At present, the stable coins on the chain are in a state of slow growth.
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Stable currency transfer stack chart YTD, source: Artemis
Solana has the market share of stable currency transfer in the first half of the year.But since June, its market share has declined significantly.In the first half of the year, Solana’s performance was absolutely dazzling, but its starting data in the second half of the year had a significant decline.
Competitors data
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Number of active addresses on the chain, source: Artemis
In a public chain, Base is considered an EVM ecological potential Solana competitor.The number of active addresses on the Base chain is increasing rapidly, and SOLANA is still in a high -speed growth stage when it has a premier advantage.Near maintains a high level, but Aptos and SUI are behind in the competition of the public chain.
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TVL comparison, source source: Artemis
Solana’s TVL in the field of DEFI is also progressing significantly. Its TVL has reached a historical high, and it is also a large distance compared to other public chains, but it is worth noting that BASE is also in the stage of high -speed growth.
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Public chain stabilization currency reserves, source: allium
At present, the market share of the stable coin supply of Solana has been sluggish. Because of the advent of multi -chain, Ethereum has naturally reduced its market share, and the Base market share is increasing quietly.
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Financing data, source: MESSARI
In terms of financing in the capital market, the frequency of financing of Base Ecology has increased significantly in the last quarter and surpassed the Solana ecosystem.Therefore, through the market share of the data on the various chains and capital financing, it can also be seen that the competition with Solana in the market is established, and this competitive pressure is accompanied by the maturity of Base, solana will face greater, and Base and Solana willThe vision is similar, and they all hope to complete the Cryptio Native Consumer App vision of Mass Adoption with high TPS.
Facing technical challenges
Downturn
Solana has experienced many downtime in history, and we have sorted out its specific events and the reasons for the downtime:
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May 4, 2021
The decline in network performance has caused a large number of transactions to be unable to be sold
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September 3, 2021
The network is unstable, the performance decreases, the duration is about 1 hour
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September 14, 2021
Grape Protocol’s IDO on the Raydium platform is hot. Many users send a large number of transactions through the machine coats written by writing. These transactions cause “memory overflow”, resulting in the collapse of the verification node. In the end, the entire network could not be released, and the interrupt time was 17 hours.
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January 21, 2022
Due to the large market fluctuations, the network is full of transactions submitted by a large number of arbitrage robots, resulting in a serious load caused by the network, and the interruption time is 30 hours.
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May 1, 2022
Due to the casting of a new NFT project, the emergence of a large number of robotic transactions caused the main network node to lose consensus, and then suspended for 7 hours.
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June 1, 2022
Due to the durable nonce function vulnerability in the transaction, the network restarts, the interrupt time is about 4.5 hours.
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October 1, 2022
Due to the error of the node configuration, the network is down
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February 25, 2023
There was a problem with the performance of Solana’s main network, and finally the verified node was forced to automatically enter the “voting” security mode and could not handle user transactions.
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February 6, 2024
BPF (Berkley Packet Filter) loader has a failure, and the downtime is 4 hours and 46 minutes
Because of its network architecture such as Gulfstream Leader election mechanism and a single node risk at the Leader node, the subsequent prediction of the Leader node becomes feasible, and when the network transaction increases, it will cause a lot of memory pressure to the leader of a single node.The Leader node needs to prepare a re -transmitting block at any time to the node in the Turbine tree, otherwise the consensus voting cannot be completed.When a large number of DDOS attacks appear, the system downtime caused by the failure of a single node becomes extremely frequent.
In short, the downtime is mainly a problem that cannot be produced. It may be because the single node failure brought by the Leader mechanism will cause problems at the block formation.question.Overall, this is closely related to Solana’s own architecture and software test process.
Trading failure
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The proportion of user failure transactions is source: dune
Users who have used Solana should know that our transactions can not be submitted normally. After a while, it is found that the transaction fails, which has caused a very poor user experience.As shown above, according to statistics, about 35%of the transactions submitted by users are failed, and users need to be submitted multiple times. When there is a large fluctuation on the chain, this ratio will be greater.
The main reason is that network layer technology Quic, which is a newer technology.
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Network protocol level -5 layers of structure, source: Research Gate
Quic (Quickl UDP Internet Connections) is proposed by Google and improved the transmission layer for the HTTP 2.0 protocol.This experimental protocol is developed based on the UDP transfer layer protocol, also known as HTTP 3.0.
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Http/2 and quic icon, Figure source: EMQX
TCP reliability is higher than UDP, but the rate of UDP is higher than that of TCP, because TCP will have a congestion control mechanism when the package is lost and re -transmits the lost package.UDP speed is high and low reliability. GOGGLE hopes to build a transmission layer protocol QUIC with high reliability and high rate.The core feature of Quic is the logic flow of each other.It allows multiple data streams in parallel connection on a single connection, and each stream can be processed independently.In contrast, TCP only supports single data streams, and needs to be received and confirmed in the order of sending.
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Fail trading icon, source source: Bread
The main reason for Solana’s downtime is to use the QUIC experimental application layer protocol. Due to the rapids of UDP and multi -way transmission, and want to maintain the transmission of complete data, it will also design the mechanism to repeat the packaging situation multiple times.EssenceWhen receiving multiple transactions, the Leader node is performed through the QUIC protocol, but the Leader node is a computer after all. The transaction capacity that can be handled in particular.Some channel connections will be cut, which will cause transactions to be Drop.How to choose the cut -off connection does not have a set of standard (such as cutting off all the connections below XXX), and whether all connections will be cut off are random.Therefore, this has led to a certain space for black box operations. Leader nodes may be more inclined to favorable MEV transactions that are favorable, and abandon users’ low -value transactions.
MEV
In Solana’s block mechanism, because RPC is directly interacting with Leader and adopts the principle of FCFS, it does not have Mmepool like Ethereum.Due to the existence of MEMPOOL and the principles of Permission Less in Ethereum, Ethereum faces a more severe MEV problem.
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MEV architecture, source: Helius
The Jito Labs client currently occupies 50%of the client market share. Therefore, Jito Labs has built a pseudo -MEMPOOL itself, and users enter a pseudo -MEMPOOL for about 200 ms through RPC.Jito Labs provides a linked guarantee that can ensure that all transactions in the Bundle include in the block.Searchists can bid to attack the opportunity to deal with transactions. Searches are bidded to the maximum profit Bundle, and then Block Engine is responsible for finding the most bidding Bundle to the Leader running the Jito Labs client.
This is the fundamental to MEV, but MEV has its own externality and needs. If Jito Labs does not do pseudo MEMPOOL, other items will also be done. ThereforeExternal.Of course, this demand for MEV BOT has led to users in the weakest, because the verifications will charge a handling fee, and MEV BOT will obtain the profits of arbitrage, but users will suffer higher slide points and possible failed transactions.
State growth
Solana’s POH mechanism and Turbine consensus leads to too large blocks, which will cause a problem of state growth.At present, the size of the ledger does not have an exact answer, and the ledger is still growing at a speed of one block every 450 ms under the practical environment, an annual increase of 4 PB (running at the maximum performance of 1 GBPS).At present, the historical construction of Solana occurs after 2 EPOCH, which is about 4 days (a total of 100-200 GB).The past data was stored in Google Bigtable database.
About Solana’s ledger data is not transparent, and the official has not disclosed much about the size and potential impact of the pursuit of large block high TPS throughput.It is found that the centralized databases such as Google have higher performances than Genesys Go, Arweave and other performances. At present, these decentralized databases still have the problem of commercialization.This growing state and centralized hosting are one of the reasons why Solana is criticized.
Look forward to
Solana also released its future roadmap, including:
1. Improve an agreement to issue Token, including transfer encryption, HOOK and metadata pointers.
2. Client improvement, including lightweight client Tinydancer, transitional client Frankndancer, and final client Firedancer.
3. Supporting development components of ecosystems: GMAESHIFT focuses on the game’s SDK and Armada Markets of the game, focusing on the improvement of the token tokens, SPE focusing on the enterprise SVM blockchain, and the improvement of virtual machines.
We can see that the POH algorithm of Solana and the Turbine consensus mechanism all use the performance of the three dilemma of the blockchain as the priority.The application boundary is wider.And with Solana with consumer applications as a strategic goal, there is a great possibility that some Mass Adoption applications are issued.At the same time, the brand effect on the project on Solana is weak, so there are more opportunities for entrepreneurs.
In the ecological development, Solana’s main advantage lies in DEPIN/AI and Meme, but we can also see that its ecological development still has not achieved expected development, and the Consumer App still cannot be commercialized.In terms of competitors, there is also a rising star of Base. Base’s financing quota and market share are rapidly increasing.
Solana also faces some technical problems, including downtime, transaction failure, MEV, excessive growth in state, and centralization. However, Solana is active.The current TPS capacity is constructed for consumers, and its route map is also around.With the construction of more and more Layer 2 and the client’s launch, the SVM ecosystem’s TPS will be even more step.Solana is still an oasis. There are many ecological projects that do not fully reach the capital. There are also many opportunities for entrepreneurs to explore.
