Solana Blockchain - Crypto Academy / S4W4 - Homework post for pelon53.

1.- Explain in detail the PoH of Solana.

What is Solana blockchain?

The Solana blockchain is one of the world best Blockchains that boasts transaction speed and scalability. It has been quickly recognized because of its features like executing 50,000 TPS and also accompanied with very less average transaction fee of $0.00025.

Anatoly Yekovenko is the founder of Solana blockchain and this was in 2017 by his company known as Solana Lab
Solana blockchain uses two consensus algorithm in their operation which are:
• Proof of History (PoH)
• • Proof Of Stake (PoS)

SOLANA PROOF OF HISTORY (POH)

Mainly hearing of the word history, one can easily interprete it as a reflection on past activity or event. Solana blockchain has adopted this PoH to facilitate the storage and presentation of every verifiable data in the blockchain hence it's uniqueness.

A perfect example is the message that Satoshi Nakamoto left on the genesis block of bitcoin. There he wrote

*** " The times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".***
It was later uncovered that this message was a headline in one of The Times article whose date corresponded to 03/Jan/ 2009.
** This message now confirms that even though the time of the computer could be manipulated, he couldn't have created the genesis block before 03/Jan /2009 because there was real life history to prove it**

Proof of History is a consensus which creates and records past event history with their accurate time. With PoH, there is no need for the Solana blockchain to depend upon the computer time/clock rather a Crytptographic time is what it depends on. This is achieved by giving every transaction a time stamp hence the miners cannot choose to leave out any transaction out of record. In the operation of PoH, nodes keep their own time. The PoH is what has given Solana blockchain it's transaction speed advantage over others.

The PoH which Solana blockchain operates with the use of a delay function which is verifiable and in the process of producing an output, can be able to verify real time move.

2.- Explain at least 2 cases of use of Solana.

Maps.me

This is among the use case of Solana. Maps.me refers to a mobile application with software for IOS, android phone users and blackberry phone users. This app as it's name implies can be used to locate various geographic areas, locations or even zones thus giving the app its value. One beautiful thing about this app is that it can be used offline therfore giving it an edge over other apps that must require internet connection to function.

It also has the sales of products and services on the platform aside the regular map/ geographical location. People who use the app can transfer, store and convert some certain crypto assets via the app and even be able to pay for purchases digitally.

Maps.me which was previously known as maps with me became an open source in 2015 and when it was sold over to Daegu Limited, the app moved to a new level with a change in its content and interface.

Below are some Maps.me unique features

• Offline operation/use
• • bookmarks and location share with others
• Ability to detect it's users immediate location
• • The use of open street map data in its location result.
• Utilises little memory space and with a speedy operation.

Maps.me is resident on Solana blockchain
with built in digital wallet to facilitate P2P transactions. The native token of maps.me is MAPS. According to coinmarketcap.com, MAPS (at the time of writing) has a price value of $0.9198, a market cap of $46,829,337, a circulating supply of 10,000,000,000 MAPS.

2. Solfarm

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Solfarm, is the first aggregation platform of Solana and resides on the Solana blockchain. It benefits from the low transaction cost of it's resident Blockchain. Solfarm is a decentralised platform and it was launched in April, 2021 with the core purpose of making farming experience without stress for users and to aid farmers to earn easily. Solfarm was not launched with a token at it's initial release but today, it now owns a token known as TULIP.
The TULIP is used by Solfarm users in; Checking of User Pool Reward, as Treasury, and for fee payments on the platform.

TULIP according to Coinmarketcap.com (at the time of writing) has a price value of $19.89 with a market cap of $16,218,011 and a circulating supply of 815,205.78 TULIP with a max supply of 10,000,000 TULIP. It's coin rank is # 822.

3.- Detail and explain the SOLA token.

SOLA is short form of the word Social Layer. SOLA is a platform that is decentralised with an open source but also resides on the Solana blockchain and it's founder is Pavel Panov

Via the Sola platform, users can earn by means of creating contents. Unlike some decentralised social media platform, SOLA operates with it's app and it's users get rewarded with SOLA token when they create value adding contents.

SOLA is a DeFi with it's token known as SOLA token and it resides on the Solana blockchain.

The SOLA token by coingecko.com (at the time of writing) has a price value of $0.070299 with a market cap of $1,939,399 and a circulating supply of 27,153,077 SOLA token out of a **maximum supply of 27,153,077. It's rank is # 1756.

Technically, it appears to be that SOLA token has reached its supply limit and obviously, there will be no more minting of the token.

Below is the chart of SOLA token for 12 days

4.- When did Solana Blockchain see its operations interrupted? Why? Explain.

On the 14th of September, 2021, Solana blockchain encountered an interruption in its operation

The Reason

This interruption and slow down was brought about by transactions over flooding the Solana blockchain. There were excess transactions which had piled up and awaiting processing and because of this Solana split into two versions which is popularly known as a fork

Usually, a fork is a split up of a network for some reasons and by agreement of members or users. It could also be intentionally done or can happen by accident. That of Solana was accidental and lasted not more than a day.

Anatoly Yekovenko who is one of the co-founder of Solana stated that since Blockchains at mainly run by random volunteers with incentives, then there is no guarantee that the network will be completely free from bug.

After this breakdown, the Solana blockchain encountered a decline in the value of it's coin (SOL) as a result.

The native token of Solana blockchain is SOL
According to coinmarketcap.com SOL price value (at the time of writing) is $158.74 and has a market cap of $47,277,826,386. It currently has a circulating supply of 297,842,875.31 SOL out of a total supply of 505,531,412 SOL. SOL market rank is # 7

Below is the chart of SOL for one month.

5.- Check the last block generated in Solana and make an approximate calculation of How many blocks per second have been generated in Solana, taking into account from the initial block to the current one? Justify your answer and show screenshots.

The site explorer.solana.com proved futile to use (showing only black background at the time of writing).

What I did is to use another explorer. This time the explorer is solscan

On opening the homepage, I could see the block height, slot height, transaction count and some other important details.

When I click on Blocks At the top right hand corner, I could see the last generated block, and I click it open. Below is a screenshot.

Regards to professor @pelon53