Solana Blockchain - Crypto Academy / S4W4 - Homework Post for Professor @pelon53

Assalamualaikum and good morning everyone, welcome to the Steemit Crypto Academy season 4. This morning I will write a post about Solana Blockchain as a homework post for professor @pelon53 and this is my sixth post in this season.

The professor has explained about Solana Blockchain in learning posts that have been shared with this community and now it's time for students to finish the homework that has been given, there are five main questions that must be answered in this homework and I will try to answer them in this post. I am very enthusiastic to start it because this is a new knowledge for me.

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Q1.) Explain in detail Solana's PoH

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With the aim of supporting faster and more scalable operations, Solana Blockchain uses the latest technology in carrying out its operations, namely PoH (Proof of History) consensus. The consensus will record each transaction as a proof of transaction, then the evidence will be evaluated and given a unique Hash that can be verified publicly so that everyone can know the various transactions that occur on the Solana Blockchain, each node can also track the sequence of transactions based on the order of time, all of which are very transparent. Currently Solana Blockchain has more than 200 physical nodes that can support more than 60,000 transactions per second.

PoH consensus has proven to be effective with high scalability, high speed, and more efficiency. Consensus PoH uses the SHA-256 Hash Function continuously to form an interconnected Hash chain, the output of the previous Function will be the input for the next Function and so on. All the data will be validated automatically based on a regular timeline and every verified transaction will be added to the block by the validator. In carrying out its operations, the performance of PoH consensus is also simplified by BFT Tower to support cryptographic clocks so that transaction costs are lower.

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Q2.) Describe at least 2 use cases of Solana

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A. Orca

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Orca is a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) that runs on the Solana Blockchain network with the main advantages of offering very low transaction fees and high transaction speeds. In addition, this DEX also supports the use of DeFi, DAO, AMM, and Yield Farming. Users will generally connect their own Sollet Wallet to use this DEX and enjoy all its features. But for now there are not too many coins that have been registered here, currently there are only more than 30 coins that have been actively traded here and by looking at the progress of the Solana Blockchain, it is very likely that the coins that will be listed here will increase. This platform also has a user-friendly and easy-to-use page display of course.

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By using a smart contract which is also based on the Solana Blockchain network, this platform has also successfully launched a native token with the market name ORCA. This token can be transacted with high scalability and high transaction speed of course. Based on the Coinmarketcap.com website, it can be seen that the ORCA Token is currently trading at a price of $16.30 and the amount of Diluted Market Cap is $1,630,012,345 while the trading volume in the last 24 hours is $11,819,830 with a total supply of 100,000,000 ORCA.

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B. Raydium

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Raydium is a platform that supports the use of DeFi and Automated Market Maker (AMM) running on the Solana Blockchain network. The main advantage of this platform is the use of Central-Limit Orders in providing liquidity that allows providers and users to be able to access the entire serum ecosystem and liquidity providers will get a number of prizes for each transaction fee that has been paid by users while a number of selected pools will be rewarded with a number of RAY Tokens in exchange for Staking and Farming. In addition, this platform also has an Exchange feature that allows users to exchange their tokens. Like the Orca platform, this platform also has a user-friendly and easy-to-use page display, of course.

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By using a smart contract which is also based on the Solana Blockchain network, this platform has also successfully launched a native token with the market name RAY. This token can be transacted with high scalability and high transaction speed, of course. Based on the Coinmarketcap.com website, it can be seen that the RAY Token is currently trading at a price of $9.55 and a total market cap of $680,774,250 while the trading volume in the last 24 hours was $109.017,881 with a total supply of 555,000,000 RAY.

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Q3.) Explain SOLA token in detail

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SOLA is the native token of a Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) platform called Solatoken.net and this token is the governance token on the platform that was originally created as Solana Market Maker. That way, the Solatoken.net platform provides privileges for every SOLA token holder to play an active role and participate in every policy and various decisions made by this platform. The more SOLAs you hold, the more influence you can have on this platform. However for now SOLA is not listed on a well-known exchange like Binance and for now can only be traded on the Solatoken.net platform and the Raydium platform with the SOLA/USDC trading pair, currently there are almost 2000 SOLA token holders.

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By using a smart contract which is also based on the Solana Blockchain network, SOLA Tokens can be transacted with high scalability and high transaction speed, of course. Based on the Coingecko.com website, it can be seen that SOLA Token is currently trading at a price of $0.056012 and a total market capitalization of $1,520,905 while the trading volume in the last 24 hours is $72,489 with a total supply of 27,153,077 SOLA.

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Q4.) When did Solana Blockchain see its operations disrupted? Why?

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Solana Blockchain experienced a severe disruption on September 14, which caused the entire network to shut down for most of the day and impacted all projects running on this network. This raises great concern in the cryptocurrency world and for investors in particular because there are billions of dollars stored on this network.

Solana's team then confirmed that the case was caused by too many transactions on the Solana Blockchain network that the network was unable to validate all of these transactions, Solana's team estimated that there were 400,000 transactions per second at that time whereas Solana Blockchain could only process more than 60,000 transactions. per second. With the number of transactions that are far from its capacity, it causes a number of nodes that work on this network to go offline because the number of transactions has consumed most of the memory space owned by this blockchain.

The Solana team also argues that some of the transactions are Bots and the Bots are most likely from the Raydium platform as the platform is the main project running on the Solana network. At that time a number of parties used these bots to conduct transactions in the launch of the Grape Protocol (GRAPE) on the Raydium platform which was offered through the Initial Deposit Offering (IDO) process. To solve this problem, then validators tried hard to restart this network and it turned out that this process was successfully carried out by validators in a few hours later. Even though the system has returned to normal, this case still has a big question mark for a number of parties, of course.

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Q5.) Check the last block generated in Solana and make an approximate calculation how many blocks per second have been generated in Solana, taking into account from the initial block to the current block? Explain your answer and show a screenshot

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Based on the official website, Solana Blockchain can process 1 Block in 0.5 seconds or equal to 2 Blocks in 1 second and I will use the site https://explorer.solana.com/ to answer this question.

• The last block when this post was made was 99207727. Below is detailed information about the Block. There were 912 transactions processed by this Block and the number of successful transactions was 861 with the Timestamp being Oct 1, 2021 at 06:42:15 for the UTC time zone and Oct 1, 2021 at 13:42:15 for the GMT+7 zone.

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• Then I will check the Genesis Block to see the timestamp and here is what the Genesis Block looks like. Turns out the Timestamp can't be seen as “Unavailable”.

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• Because the Timestamp on the Genesis Block page is “Unavailable”, scroll the page down and then click on one of the transactions contained in the Genesis Block to find out the Timestamp.

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• Then a display like the following will appear and you can see the Timestamp Genesis Block easily. The timestamp is Mar 16, 2020 at 21:30:51 Western Indonesia Time GMT+7.

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Calculation:

1 Block per 0,5 second, then the block formation rate in general is:
2 Block per second
120 Block per minute
7.200 Block per hour
172.800 Block per day
5.184.000 Block per month
62.208.000 Block per year

Genesis Block: 1
Timestamp GMT+7: Mar 16, 2020 at 21:30:51

Last Block: 99207727
Timestamp GMT+7: Oct 1, 2021 at 13:42:15

Based on my country's time zone GMT+7 or also known as Western Indonesia Time, the total time between Mar 16, 2020 at 21:30:51 to Oct 1, 2021 at 13:42:15 is 563 days 7 hours 48 minutes 36 seconds or equals 48671316 seconds, I have converted it using an online converter.

Last Block / Time = 99207727 Block / 48671316 second = 2.0383 Block / second or equivalent to 2 Block / second

99207727 x 0.5 = 49603863.5 second

Convert seconds to years:
49603863.5 second = 826731.06 minute
826731.06 menit = 13778.85 hour
13778.85 hour = 574.12 day
574.12 day = 18.875 month
18.875 month = 1.5729282 year

Based on theoretical calculations, it can be seen that the formation of the 99207727 Block takes 49603863.5 seconds while based on the actual calculation shows that the formation of the 99207727 Block takes 48671316 seconds. The two calculations show results that are not much different of course.

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Conclusions

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Solana Blockchain is one of the extraordinary innovations that is present in the world of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. Solana Blockchain uses the latest technology in carrying out its operations, namely PoH (Proof of History) consensus, with the main goal being to support faster and more scalable operations with high scalability. Even though there have been obstacles in the operational process, these problems have been successfully resolved and so far the Solana Blockchain continues to show progress with an increasing number of users, many people hope that Solana's Blockchain will continue to grow in the future, let's just wait.