Solana is a public blockchain that runs programs, tokens and payments without a bank or a company sitting in between. SOL is the token of that network: you pay the fees with it, and the machines that write the blocks post it as security. Technically Solana belongs to the group of layer-1 blockchains, the networks that settle their transactions themselves rather than building on another network.
The mainnet launched in March 2020. Since then the network has processed 563.3 billion transactions by its own count. On October 23, 2026 one SOL cost $103.72, or €92.40, which puts Solana at rank seven among all cryptocurrencies with a market capitalisation of just over $61 billion. The all-time high of $293.31 dates from January 19, 2025.
What is Solana? A layer-1 blockchain that keeps its own clock
The difference from older networks starts with the clock. In a classic blockchain, the network has to agree on the order in which transactions arrived for every single block. Solana turns that around: a method called Proof of History continuously produces a sequence of computed results in which each result requires the previous one. Because ...
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