Talk:Solana (blockchain platform)

Wiki Education assignment: CAS First-Year Seminar

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2022 and 9 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LodFod, Meta02 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: GGLOL1600, Yuhcool.

Request to Add Recent Developments in Market Capitalization Section​

I propose updating the "Market Value" section of the Solana article to include two recent developments:

1. Robinhood Relisting SOL: Add to the "Market value" Section: In November 2024, Robinhood Crypto reverted on this action by relisting Solana (SOL) for U.S. customers, alongside several other cryptocurrencies.
2. Solana's All-Time High Amid Memecoin Surge:
   1. Create new paragraph in "Market value" section.
   2. Add text: In January 2025, Solana reached a new all-time high, driven by increased trading activity following the launch of President Donald Trump's memecoin, $TRUMP, on the Solana blockchain.

These additions would provide readers with updated information on Solana's market performance and recent developments.

Greatreliablesources (talk) 18:07, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Just to contribute for the second proposed change, there are plenty of reliable sources that reported on Solana's surge in value and mention $TRUMP as a primary driving factor.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/crypto-market-today.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solana-down-over-60-solana-190153487.html

In my opinion the price being in the lede at all seems just WP:UNDUE, as it was already brought up before and should honestly be evident by, well, cryptocurrencies being highly volatile in general. I get why it was probably included originally, but things like $TRUMP, it being part of the proposed cryptocurrency reserve, and the main platform behind Pump.fun seem just as relevant in hindsight. Mystic Cornball (talk) 21:44, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done Perception312 (talk) 01:26, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Remove Solana wallet hack from lede

• What I think should be changed (format using {{textdiff}}):

−

The blockchain has experienced several major outages, Solana wallets were subjected to a hack, and a class action lawsuit was filed alleging that Solana sells unregistered securities, and misled investors about the number of tokens.

+

The blockchain has experienced several major outages and a class action lawsuit was filed alleging that Solana sells unregistered securities, and misled investors about the number of tokens.

−

The Solana Foundation said that the hack was caused by digital wallet software from Slope Finance.

+

The hack was later attributed to a security flaw in the digital wallet software provided by Slope Finance.

Also add this article as a reference to the latter change, replacing the current reference.

• Why it should be changed:

The first change was already done around three weeks ago, but then essentially reverted by changing the phrasing slightly.

The Guardian article cited in the article makes it already very clear this was considered a potential issue related to a specific wallet software provider rather than the Solana blockchain itself, which in itself should be reason enough to not have this in the lede: “The root cause is still not clear, but it appears to be due to a flaw in certain wallet software – rather than in the Solana blockchain itself,” said Elliptic, adding that it appeared a single hacker was involved.

This has been further confirmed following this follow-up article by Yahoo Finance, which clearly attributes this hack to bad security practice by a wallet provider, and not the Solana blockchain platform: "The massive Solana wallet hack had occurred after centralized servers stored unencrypted seed phrases sent by Slope Wallet’s mobile app, making them visible to anyone with access to the server, showed a preliminary finding from blockchain audit firm OtterSec."

Having this in the lede is like adding the recent Coinbase hack to the lede of the Bitcoin article and calling it a "Bitcoin wallet data breach". The implication being that this was a security flaw in the blockchain platform itself, which is not the case.

The second change follows from this and updates the article's coverage on the situation accordingly, also improving the somewhat mischaracterisation that only Solana Foundation itself attributed the hack to a third party (see the quote from The Guardian above, which we already cite one sentence earlier).

Mystic Cornball (talk) 12:28, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

 Not done - It's a major event and a great deal of sources wrote about it, so it should remain in the lead section. Also, That 'Yahoo Finance' article is a repost (nearly all material on Yahoo finance is', in this case of an unreliable crypto blog. - MrOllie (talk) 18:15, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Again: including this event in the lede is like saying the Bitcoin article should include every single hack ever conducted on a wallet or third-party service offering custody in the lede. This hack was not caused by a security issue in the blockchain platform, it was a security issue in a specific wallet software provider's service. This is already made very clear by the sources we cite as-is.

It's a major event and a great deal of sources wrote about it I mean, there's like half a dozen from somewhat reliable sources with almost no follow-up from reliable sources, considering you're right about that Yahoo Finance article. Which is understandable, considering the volume affected appears to be around $8 million. For comparison, events like the Wormhole exploit the same year received considerable more coverage by sheer volume affected (>$300m) alone and are not even mentioned in the article. This has absolutely no place in the lede, especially not while implying this was an inherent issue of all wallets as it does right now. Mystic Cornball (talk) 23:14, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Took a bit of digging, but the same OtterSec research results covered in the blog cited by Yahoo Finance is also covered in this article by Heise Online: Link

Unfortunately a German source, but a highly reliable one for technological topics and as I said the sourcing on this incident is thin as-is. Mystic Cornball (talk) 23:30, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Intersting...

So apparently my edits are non-netural?

I can understand asking me not focusing on the negative (even though Solana has been mired in controversy since its launch, as you can find in news), in that case a section on "Lawsuits" would still be preferable to the current format because putting lawsuits in the middle of history which also has application cases in it are hard to comprehend. And why do we have a section on "Outage" but not "Lawsuit"? If we are talking about "negative" here.

A study by IT professors in India is considered dubious source? A Hong Kong-listed tech company using Solana is considered non-news? Because they are outside the Anglosphere? (If I quote Chinese news instead, maybe I can show you how its all over the news here.) But somehow a paragraph about Solana price reaching historic high simultaneous to Trump launching his coin is considered so important it must stay there? I guess Orientalism is still a thing.

A citation needed tag which I updated because it asked for a citation is also reverted?

An update on the class-action lawsuit is also reverted because...reason.

I was thinking of adding a part about FTX's relationship with Solana Foundation but I guess that would be "too critical" as well.

Okay. I guess this is "your article" and no one else should touch it. Not the first time I guess. Back to my citation mine. Peacing out. Arutoria (talk) 00:19, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Uh huh, "Orientalism", sure.

I assume this is about this revert.

The "Hong Kong-listed tech company" is non-notable and the source is inane churnalism. It doesn't automatically matter if Memestrategy is the first publicly listed digital asset company in Hong Kong or not. If this means something, cite a better source and use that source to explain why it matters to the Solana blockchain.

For the controversy section, see WP:CSECTION.

As for the International Journal of Informatics and Communication Technology study (published by the Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science in conjuction with the Intelektual Pustaka Media Utama), the paragraph didn't say anything of substance. It's just vague unfalsifiable claims about 'scalability' and such. The source is flimsy and the claims were too vague to be useful. Grayfell (talk) 00:45, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

So out of all the points, you contested two.

Are you going to let me reformat it to better separate history, use case, and lawsuits. Because I am going to do it now.

The study is nothing special, that is agreed. The conclusion is also as you would expect - Solana has better scaling but few applications. Still, what might be obvious to you and me may not be obvious to people who might not know anything about crypto, and I think that would be helpful for education purpose.

For the news, I do a lot of editing based on what news I happen to stumbled upon. I actually agree that it is not a very good edit (too copy and pasty) and that is why I did not contest that one, but that alone should not invalidate my other edits. Some of which I still argue is better than the current version, especially the lawsuit ones. Arutoria (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

This is an article under contentious topics sanctions, including an active 1RR sanction. Please secure agreement on this talk page rather than re-attempting disputed edits. MrOllie (talk) 01:08, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Please propose changes and edit incrementally starting with non-controversial changes (if there are any).

For the non-notable journal's article, it doesn't matter if it's obvious or not, they are still unfalsifiable claims and the source itself doesn't appear very reliable.

The deeper issue is that reliable, independent sources for crypto projects are hard to come by. This is why the article looks like this (and yes, it's bad). I don't think chopping it up is going to help. Most sources outside of the crypto sphere don't talk about Solana very much, and sources within that sphere are pretty much never reliable. Grayfell (talk) 03:04, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I have already held off making edits and will wait for 24 hours.

I am not looking for a fight. I just think the page can be better. If there is a threshold of whether an event is considered relevant, the threshold should be equivalent to all events.

If a sentence like "In January 2025, Solana reached a new all-time high of $294, coinciding with the use of the blockchain for US President Donald Trump's memecoins, $TRUMP.", which is about an American-centric speculation event, is considered relevant. Then I would very much consider a Hong Kong-listed company investing in Solana relevant.

In this case, I would suggest we either leave both intact or delete this sentence.

Again, I would propose the "history" part should be left for important events such as launch date, ownership change, etc.. A separate part regarding "application" of Solana can be considered. Lawsuits should be a major part because of how it could directly affect Solana in the future.

The lawsuit status could be updated. The [citation needed] part could be updated.

A new potential part about relations with FTX can be considered. Solana was, for a long time, promoted by FTX. This should be relevant.

My view about the current Wikipedia being American-centric is indeed my experience. For e.g., this page, which had no references at all before yesterday, are left to rot for years because there is no English sources about a station in China. For someone who can speak the language, this is easy. I am in the process of updating these station pages. Because probably no one else would do it. Arutoria (talk) 04:49, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

I will also ensure all changes are done incrementally, so that any changes can be easily reverted without affecting other parts of the article. Arutoria (talk) 06:44, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

The sources for the Hong Kong company appear to be routine, press releases, or churnalism derived from press releases. In contrast, $Trump is noteworthy for a lot of reasons and it has its own article with many sources. If readers want to know what this is and why it's significant, they can clink on the wikilink to get some context. The MemeStrategy thing is a dead-end, though. From these sources, Ray Chan (businessman) (the 9gag guy) spent HK$2.9 million on this crypto, and... that's about all that happened. This is a tiny, tiny fraction of how much has been spent on $Trump. This transaction isn't automatically noteworthy to that crypto, nor to the guy himself, and it doesn't tell readers enough to be worth mentioning even with superficially reliable sources.

I agree that Wikipedia is far too US-centric, and Wikipedia does too. This is the English-language Wikipedia, so it's not exactly a mystery why editors prefer English language sources. Regardless of what language, sources should be held to the same standards. Grayfell (talk) 20:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Fine. I accept this argument. Will leave the Trump sentence intact. Arutoria (talk) 02:02, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

After re-reading the article, I realized why it feels so weird.

It was already established in the lead paragraph that Solana is the blockchain platform and SOL is the coin.

In that case, the platform of Solana should be the focus of the page and not SOL.

While the Trump coin causing speculation does not fundamentally change Solana, the use case of launching on the block chain arguably does.

So when we talk about Solana, we should specify which one we are talking about. The market value section can be renamed "Price of SOL token" and put in somewhere down below to distinguish them from the history of the platform.

Some of the description,such as the "trading value" (market capitalization) can also be put there. Arutoria (talk) 03:57, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

From what I have seen, reliable sources don't really care about the distinction between the platform and the cryptocurrency. If one ceased to exist, it would take the other with it. Based on past discussions, advocates for the cryptocurrency really do care about that distinction, though. Since Wikipedia isn't a platform for promotion, we should side with reliable sources.

More importantly, the history of the price cannot be separated from the history of the platform or the lawsuits. The price doesn't shift in a vacuum, it's a consequence of things like lawsuits, outages, politics, or fraud like FTX. Grayfell (talk) 01:31, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

This is fine. I just thought that might be easier to read. My understanding after reading a lot of crypto stuff is that they view the token separately because some of them view the token as sort of pseudo stock. So its like talking about Microsoft Corp and MSFT. Just to be clear, I have zero investment in crypto and related stuff.

Anyway, if the mainstream media uses that, I am fine with it. Arutoria (talk) 03:26, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Sourcing for proof of history

Hello to editors watching this page. On behalf of AI Training Inc. via my work at Beutler Ink, I am researching potential updates to this article in an effort to make it a more neutral, well-rounded article about Solana that also speaks to some of the technical characteristics that have made Solana a unique chain. The first thing I noticed is the lack of mention to Solana's proof of history (PoH) mechanism, which is an important differentiator when comparing Solana to other chains.

Previous mentions of PoH have been removed from the article, and consensus of a discussion from 2023 appeared to be that the term should not be used as though it were commonly known terminology. However, there was sentiment that the concept behind the "proof of history" could potentially be mentioned briefly.

Given the strict sourcing requirements for crypto- and blockchain-related articles, I ask editors if CNBC and Yahoo Finance could be used to cite a brief mention? The article "Solana’s slide accelerates — $50 billion in value wiped from the cryptocurrency in 2022" (CNBC) is already cited five times in the live article to verify support for smart contracts and decentralized apps, popularity due in part to NFTs, market cap, and outages. Yahoo Finance is also used to verify content in the live article. This particular article, "Solana: Why Ethereum's lesser known rival is steadily rising" (Yahoo Finance), is not currently used, but it does discuss PoH.

I suggest using these two sources to add something about proof of history. For example: Solana's proof of stake mechanism includes what Solana calls "proof of history", which is used to timestamp transactions and allow for them to be processed simultaneously.

References

The idea here is to provide a brief explanation of PoH, and do it in a way as suggested in the 2023 Talk page discussion, where an editor wrote, "there is probably a way to describe proof of history while contextualizing it as something validated mainly by Solana Labs itself".

Thank you for considering these updates. Danilo Two (talk) 17:53, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Please don't use ChatGPT or other LLMs to propose changes to articles.

The CNBC source treats 'proof-of-history' as hype:

• Developers raved about Solana’s support for smart contracts, pieces of code that execute pre-programmed directives, as well as an innovative proof-of-history consensus mechanism. -Note that it isn't saying that this is innovative, only that its own developers "raved" about this.
• Solana’s supposed differentiating factor was augmenting proof-of-stake with proof-of-history — the ability to prove that a transaction happened at a particular moment.[1] (emphasis added)

The Yahoo one is more generous, arguable to a fault, but it is mostly just recycling claims by Solana which are taken at face value. Wikipedia is not a platform for promotion or advocacy.

Your suggestion is too vague and these sources are too weak for this point. This change would introduce the company's own jargon without providing a neutral description of what that actually means. Grayfell (talk) 18:32, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@Grayfell: Thanks for replying. A couple quick clarifications:

1. Just to clarify, none of my request above was created using ChatGPT or any other LLM
2. You and I may have read this sentence differently: Developers raved about Solana’s support for smart contracts, pieces of code that execute pre-programmed directives, as well as an innovative proof-of-history consensus mechanism. Now that you've explained it, I can see how you read that as Solana's own developers, but I read it as developers who use Solana. Therefore, it is a little unclear on that.

I still think an encyclopedia article benefits from a proper explanation of what makes its topic unique. If I try to peel this back to its most basic description, (including removing the term "proof of history"), this is what sticks out: The idea behind Solana's mechanism is that transactions are timestamped to verify the order and the duration of time between events on its blockchain. Here are additional sources to verify this concept:

• Can Solana be the Solution to the Blockchain Scalability Problem?, 2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER): "...a proof for verifying the order and the time interval between events."
• Solana’s transaction network: analysis, insights, and comparison, EPJ Data Science: "...a cryptographic clock that allows validators to verify the timing and order of events without direct communication."

With CNBC, Yahoo, plus discussion at conferences and mentions in a peer-reviewed source, does this help to establish relevance of the concept behind "proof of history" for this article, even if we don't use the exact term "proof of history"?

Let me know your thoughts. Danilo Two (talk) 15:25, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Most of these sources aren't in depth enough to tell us much of anything, and EPJ Data Science spends most of its time discussing how 'Proof of History' has serious flaws (for example We show that Solana has a significantly higher transaction failure rate of 20.5% compared to Ethereum’s negligible 0.09%. Our analysis identifies fundamental causes of these failures, including exceeded slippage tolerance and nonce mismatches, primarily due to Solana’s rapid block production enabled by its PoH consensus mechanism.. If we were to write something based on that source, it would probably have to be that 'Proof of History' is unique - and uniquely worse - than mechanisms used by other blockchains. MrOllie (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

@MrOllie: Thanks for the input. I certainly don't dispute that there are critiques of Solana. My intention is not to suggest Solana is flawless, simply to explain one core concept behind the topic of this encyclopedia article, which is that Solana verifies the timing and order of events on its blockchain. Danilo Two (talk) 19:26, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

"Solana verifies the timing and order of events on its blockchain". This raises a question that a disinterested reader of this article could ask: How is this different from every other blockchain? I am not personally asking you this question, I am saying that the only way to answer this question in the article is via reliable, independent sources. Per your own sources, Solana is in some measurable ways worse at this than Ethereum. If this term is just branding and jargon, it doesn't belong. If it's more than that, we should be able to cite sources which allow us to explain this to readers. Grayfell (talk) 19:45, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Grayfell. I do believe the article as is leads readers to ask the question you posed: How is this different from every other blockchain? I'll go back to the sources to see how the difference can be teased out more. Danilo Two (talk) 20:01, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

"Teasing" out the difference sounds a lot like WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. Look for a source which directly explains this. Grayfell (talk) 20:24, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Yes, of course. I was using the term conversationally. I'll be looking at how sources directly explain this. Danilo Two (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

MrOllie and Grayfell, based on this discussion I put together proposed wording that attempts to explain how Solana differs from others, including critique from the EPJ Data Science paper.

Specifically, the EPJ Data Science paper said Solana's approach "offers a more efficient method of processing transactions compared to Bitcoin's Proof of Work (PoW) and Ethereum's Proof of State (PoS) mechanisms by integrating the passage of time directly into the blockchain. Also, this mechanism allows Solana to have orders of magnitude lower transaction costs than Ethereum by increasing the throughput of the network". As noted earlier in this discussion, the same researchers found that, compared to Ethereum, Solana has a higher transaction failure rate "primarily due to Solana's rapid block production". With all this mind, how's this?

Solana's proof mechanism uses a cryptographic clock to timestamp transactions and allow for them to be processed simultaneously. According to an analysis published in EPJ Data Science, Solana processes transactions more efficiently "by integrating the passage of time directly into the blockchain". It also allows for lower transaction costs. However, the same researchers found that, compared to Ethereum, Solana has a higher transaction failure rate "primarily due to Solana's rapid block production".

References

Danilo Two (talk) 13:33, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

Looks like an attempt at promotion that cherry picks favorable information from the source - and even tries to make the criticism sound like praise. I would not use that wording, no. This is also a problem for a reason we've discussed before - it employs Solana's own invention and jargon ('cryptographic clock') as though it is a concept that is widely used or understood - it isn't. MrOllie (talk) 15:52, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, MrOllie. There's no cherry picking intended here. As I pointed out before, this article does not say anything to differentiate Solana from other blockchain platforms. The article currently says Solana has been described "as an alternative to Ethereum". Indeed, but how is it different?

I previously proposed an even shorter description, which was determined to be too vague; fair enough. Therefore, I used a peer-reviewed source to show specifically how Solana differs, and included the critique that you noted earlier. I can trim the proposed language more and remove the jargon you noted, based on reliable sources.

Is this better?

Solana's proof mechanism timestamps transactions and allows for them to be processed simultaneously. According to an analysis published in EPJ Data Science, Solana's efficiency comes from "integrating the passage of time directly into the blockchain". It also allows for lower transaction costs. However, the same researchers found that, compared to Ethereum, Solana has a higher transaction failure rate due to its rate of block production.

References

Thanks, Danilo Two (talk) 18:19, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

That has the same neutrality problems - it does not correctly render the view of the citation. No need to make a slight variation and ask me again - you can put me down as a 'no' for all of these to save time. - MrOllie (talk) 18:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. This proposal is not a good summary of either source. Grayfell (talk) 19:53, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Solana processes transactions more efficiently "by integrating the passage of time directly into the blockchain". It also allows for lower transaction costs. The problem with this quote is that it sounds very sales-y without actually explaining anything to the reader. What does "integrating the passage of time directly into the blockchain" even mean?

Solana's proof mechanism timestamps transactions and allows for them to be processed simultaneously. The parallel processing and PoH are unrelated mechanisms. The question of "how is Solana different from every other blockchain" essentially boils down to two things:

• When two transactions don't conflict - i.e. don't touch the same data/accounts - it can execute both of them in parallel, while most other chains will execute all transactions in a block strictly sequentially. Other chains - like Ethereum - don't generally do this is because it's (a) complex to implement in the blockchain itself and (b) harder to use. It means that transactions have to know in advance - and pre-declare - which data they're going to touch. It's a classic trade-off: higher throughput, but harder to use for smart contract developers.
• In most Proof of Stake systems, each block goes through what is essentially a multi-phase commit - block A has to be finalized before the next leader can propose block B. On Solana, a distributed clock tells each leader when it is their turn to propose a block, without having to wait for the previous leader to propose theirs. This clock is cryptographically verifiable, so nodes can't simply pretend that it's their turn/time (this is the "proof" part). This improves throughput and decreases latency since it avoids an extra round of distributed consensus. The downside to this is that it requires a complicated algorithm to resolve the short-term divergence (forks) created when a leader is skipped.

Solana calls this distributed clock "Proof of History" or "PoH". It's probably best to avoid that term because they essentially made it up for marketing purposes, and it is a bit confusing. The current implementation is significantly different from the original "Proof of History" whitepaper.

If you want to meaningfully improve this part of the article, try finding high-quality sources that explain the fundamentals of how Solana works, in a way that an average reader will understand.

There's also work on a new consensus protocol, Alpenglow, which will replace the current TowerBFT algorithm - perhaps that will yield some good sources as well. Acromeno (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Thank you to everyone for your time. I can see there is no consensus to include this info now. If sourcing on the issue improves, I may come back with a revised request. Thanks again. Danilo Two (talk) 20:38, 27 August 2025 (UTC)