Solana, a blockchain for fast, secure, scalable, decentralized apps and marketplaces, is now live with early bidding for its community SOL token sale on CoinList. The main auction will go live from 10 PM PST on March 23 until 4 AM PST on March 24.
SOL is the native token of the Solana blockchain; which serves a few key purposes:
- Staking and fees – Solana uses a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm that incentivizes token holders to validate transactions. As a part of Solana’s security design, all fees will be paid in SOL and will be burnt, reducing the total supply. This deflationary mechanism to SOL supply incentivizes more token holders to stake which results in increased network security.
- Assets under management – if Solana gains traction and financial products are built on top of the protocol, SOL tokens will likely serve as the underlying collateral for such applications (e.g. MakerDAO using ETH as the underlying collateral for DAI).
“These are uncertain times. We’ve taken every measure to ensure our team’s health and safety, and to navigate market volatility. After assessing community interest and root causes for recent market volatility, we believe this is a critical time for crypto infrastructure to be improved. With this in mind, we are going forward with plans to launch the SOL token. We have also structured a 90% price guarantee to protect from market volatility.”
– The Solana team
Solana Highlights
- Seasoned Distributed Systems Team – Solana’s core technical team comes from Qualcomm (Fortune 500 chip manufacturer) where they managed projects such as Firefox OS and the BREW Operating System, which powered over 500 million phones. Few teams in the technology industry have experience scaling distributed systems to billions of users.
- Natively Fast and Scalable – Solana’s core breakthrough, Proof of History, significantly streamlines the process for a network to reach consensus and makes its blockchain natively scalable. This architecture avoids the added complexity that comes with other scaling approaches such as sharding and layer-two solutions.
- Demonstrated Traction – Solana’s team and performance have attracted launch partners who are frustrated by the scalability challenges inherent in existing blockchains like Ethereum. This includes a yet-to-be-announced social network protocol with 1.2M MAU, DDEX (largest decentralized exchange on Ethereum), Chainlink (decentralized oracle), and Civic (blockchain-based identity provider). Solana also has a partnership with a Fortune 200 telecommunications company to provide the virtual sim and roaming/payments layer for its $20B 5G network.
Auction Details
| Auction Dates | March 17. 12 PM PST: Deposits open & pre-bids start March 23, 10 PM PST: Auction opens (will last for 6 hours) |
| Starting Bid | $4.00 per SOL Token |
| Reserve Price | $0.04 per SOL Token |
| Minimum Bid | $100 Minimum Contribution |
| Supply Available in auction | 8m SOL Tokens are available in the Auction |
| Circulating supply at launch | 8m SOL Tokens |
| Lock-Up Period | None |
| Vesting Schedule | None |
| Eligible Participants | Non-US Participants, additional jurisdictional restrictions apply |