How to buy Solana (SOL) guide
The Ethereum rival, claiming to have the fastest blockchain supporting more than 50,000 transactions per second, has a native token called SOL being one of the top 10 tokens in the market by the market cap and fast transactions with close to 0 fees. Want to know more about Solana? You are in the right place mate!
What is Solana?
First, we must know what Solana is. Solana – which the name is inspired by part of a coast in California- was represented by Yakovenko in 2017. Yakovenko realized the leaders of blockchain technology lack great scalability; meaning that they are not able to support more than 15 transactions per second. This leads the former Qualcomm and Dropbox software engineer to think of a new blockchain technology with better scalability. So he devised Solana -a layer one protocol- to support more DApps with faster transactions and less transaction fees.
But the main reason for Solana’s popularity is the creativity used in the consensus mechanism. This innovation is Proof of History protocol or PoH. This timekeeping system would help the nodes to confirm the transaction due to a time order in an organized sequence with a cryptographic clock to increase the amount of transaction validated by the nodes. This blockchain can validate 50,000 transactions per second by 594 nodes it has.
With these amazing features, Solana is hosting hundreds of DApps, DeFi based projects, NFTs and various smart contracts. According to Yakovenko, More than 15 million NFTs have been minted on solana’s blockchain.
SOL is the native token of solana blockchain used for in-app purchases. The other feature worth talking about is the staking option which the members will be rewarded through. Up to this day, 511 SOL have been supplied, of which the circulating amount is 357 million SOL approximately.
How to buy SOL?
For buying Solana you need to open an account in one of the valid exchanges who provide crypto trading services. Why are these exchanges the first step? At the beginning, you need to exchange your fiat currency like dollars to cryptos. You can both directly buy SOL by paying fiat (dollar) or by exchanging your dollars to stablecoins like tether and then start buying Solana.
Choosing a Valid Crypto Exchange
As we mentioned above, there are trading platforms called crypto exchanges where they provide services for users to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies. Some of these exchanges are easy to use for ordinary users but some of them are complicated enough that only professional traders are able to use them. But with all said, The exchange we have mentioned must be valid in the first place. One of the most famous ones with millions of users and trades per day, is the Binance Exchange which has a variety of services for those who want to enter the market and trade in.
Buying Solana
After choosing the market to trade in, it’s time to deposit the amount needed for buying Solana. Usually there would be a deposit limit for buying different cryptocurrencies. For Binance, the minimum amount to buy crypto is 15 dollars. Simply by searching the token’s name (here is SOL) you can find Solana and buy the amount you want.
Where to store Solana?
After finishing your purchasing process, you may need a space to store the Solana you’ve bought. That storage is called a wallet. There are a variety of wallets with different functionalities which choosing them is different from person to person. But be careful that the chosen wallet supports Solana blockchain.
Last word
Solana has offered whatever Bitcoin and Ethereum was lacking; from better scalability to faster transactions. But this blockchain is not trustable because during the last year it went under several attacks. But the future of this project seems bright.