Over the course of this series of articles, we are going to look at the top blockchains in cryptocurrency, with a goal of helping you make sense of the alphabet soup of so-called “altcoins” that exists beyond that of bitcoin’s BTC and Ethereum’s ETH.
We will look at what they are, how they work, what they do, and what their pros and cons are.
You’ll come out of this series not only with a better sense of what cryptocurrency is all about; you’ll understand why the way a token works — the way its blockchain processes transactions — is key to its success or failure as a digital asset.
So, what is Solana?
Solana, exchange symbol SOL, is the current leader in the race to replace Ethereum with a better, faster and cheaper blockchain. From the perspective of investors, it is the leading “Ethereum killer.”
Bank of America Digital Asset Strategist Alkesh Shah wrote in a client note Thursday (Jan. 13) that Solana could become the “Visa of the digital asset ecosystem.”
The reason, he said, is that its “ability to provide high throughput, low cost and ease of use creates a blockchain optimized for consumer use cases like micropayments, [decentralized finance (DeFi)], [nonfungible tokens (NFTs)], decentralized networks (Web3) and gaming.”
Let’s pause for a minute to discuss the phrase Ethereum killer. What it means is that the blockchain is a smart contract platform trying to lure developers, investors and the decentralized applications (DApps) they build away from Ethereum.
Bitcoin may be the first, best-known and richest blockchain, but Ethereum is easily the most important. Launched in 2015, Ethereum brought self-executing smart contracts to the crypto industry. The core building block of every cryptocurrency and blockchain project that seeks to be more than a bitcoin-style currency replacement, smart contracts are behind DeFi, NFTs, supply chain management tools — the works.
See also: What Is a Smart Contract?
The problem is that many of…
