Solana History: From a Qualcomm Engineer's Idea to the "Ethereum Killer"
2017: A 4 AM Breakthrough
Anatoly Yakovenko was a senior engineer at Qualcomm when, in 2017, he woke up in the middle of the night with a key insight. He realized that the main problem with existing blockchains wasn't processor speed — it was the lack of a shared understanding of time between network nodes. Every node had to negotiate with others about when exactly a transaction occurred, creating massive delays.
The solution was Proof of History (PoH) — cryptographic "trusted clocks" for the entire network. PoH allows events to be recorded in chronological order without synchronization between nodes. Yakovenko described the idea in a whitepaper and began assembling a team.
2018–2019: Founding Solana Labs and First Tests
Together with Raj Gokal (ex-Google) and other engineers from Qualcomm, Intel, and Dropbox, Yakovenko founded Solana Labs in 2018. The team launched the first testnet in February 2018 and ran multiple testing rounds, achieving tens of thousands of transactions per second.
In 2019, Solana raised $20 million in a Series A. The technology attracted serious investors: Multicoin Capital, a16z Crypto, Coinbase Ventures.
2020: Mainnet Beta Launch and First Surge
In March 2020, Solana's Mainnet Beta went live. The network processed transactions in ~400 milliseconds with fees of fractions of a cent. This was a stark contrast to Ethereum, where fees during peak activity reached $50–100 per transaction.
The key event of 2020 was a partnership with FTX — Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange. FTX and Alameda Research became the ecosystem's largest investors and champions. The decentralized exchange Serum (a DEX on Solana) launched with FTX backing and became one of the first DeFi projects on the network.
2021: The NFT Explosion and $260 ATH
2021 was Solana's breakout year. While Ethereum was overwhelmed by high gas fees, Solana offered the same capabilities for fractions of a cent and hundreds of times faster.
Summer 2021: the launch of Degenerate Ape Academy — Solana's first viral NFT drop. 10,000 apes sold out in minutes. Hundreds of other collections followed. TheMagic Eden NFT marketplace became the world's second-largest by volume (after OpenSea on Ethereum).
SOL surged from $1.50 at the start of the year to an all-time high of $260 in November 2021 — a gain of over 17,000%. Solana entered the top 5 by market capitalization.
However, September 2021 brought the first major outage: the network halted for 17 hours due to overload from IDO bots. Critics raised concerns about reliability.
2022: The FTX Catastrophe and Solana's "Death"
November 2022 was the darkest month in Solana's history. The collapse of FTX and bankruptcy of Alameda Research exposed how dependent the ecosystem was on a single player.
FTX and Alameda held massive SOL positions — hundreds of millions of dollars. Liquidating these positions crashed SOL from $38 to $8 in just days (-80%). Many Solana projects lost funding. The crypto press wrote about the "end of Solana."
Yet the blockchain itself kept running without disruption. Independent developers kept building. Solana Labs released several critical protocol updates to address the vulnerabilities that had previously caused outages.
2023: A Quiet Revival
2023 was a year of quiet but determined work. The Solana ecosystem showed phenomenal resilience. Developer counts grew; new projects kept launching despite the bear market.
NFT marketplace Tensor challenged Magic Eden. Jupiteremerged as a DEX aggregator that became one of the largest in crypto by volume. The meme coin BONK became an unexpected hit and sparked a new wave of interest in Solana.
2024: New ATH and Ecosystem Maturity
By early 2024, SOL had returned above $100 and then reached a new all-time high of $260+. Solana surpassed Ethereum on several metrics: DEX trading volume, daily active users, and fee revenue.
Visa announced an expansion of its Solana settlement pilot. Stripe integrated USDC payouts via Solana. Solana Labs released the Solana Saga phone and its second generation, making Solana the only blockchain with its own mobile device.
In May 2024, the US SEC approved spot ETF applications for Ethereum, and expectations for a similar Solana ETF grew — another sign of the asset's maturity.