What is Solana? How it works and fees

What is Solana? It is a blockchain with smart contracts, launched in 2020. Its coin is SOL: it pays the fees and it is what people stake. The network is built for speed: blocks come more often than every half second, and a transfer costs a fraction of a cent. According to CoinGecko, on 27 October 2026 SOL was worth $100.82 and all of it together $59.5 billion: 2.2% of the crypto market and seventh place. On the same day we read the network through a public node.

How Solana works

• Staking instead of mining. Blocks are produced by validators backed by a SOL deposit. They take turns as "leader" on a schedule known in advance, and the bigger the deposit, the more turns. There is no mining on Solana.
• Programs. Smart contracts are called programs here. They run tokens — USDT and USDC on Solana — DEXs and thousands of meme coins.
• Accounts. As on Ethereum, an address has a balance and its history piles up on it. Tokens sit in separate token accounts, but each is tied to the owner's address, so all of a wallet's tokens can be seen from one address.
• No supply cap. There were 636.5 million SOL on 27 October, and the network issues new coins as validator rewards.

What we measured

On 27 October 2026, 12:52–12:58 UTC, through a public Solana node:

• a slot — the room for one block — came every 0.21 seconds: 200,000 slots took 11 hours 49 minutes, about 406,000 a day;
• over the last hour the network handled about 1,600 transactions a second;
• five blocks taken 3,000 slots apart held 1,573 transactions, and 608 of them (38.7%) ended in an error. The network charges the fee on failed ones too;
• the 965 successful ones paid a median fee of 5,217 lamports, or 0.0000052 SOL (a lamport is a billionth of a SOL). All 14 plain SOL transfers paid exactly 5,000 lamports, about 0.05 cents. The average fee was higher — 41,849 lamports, about 0.4 cents — because some senders pay extra for priority;
• 665 validators were signing blocks and 20 more were lagging. 436.9 million SOL was staked, 68.6% of all coins;
• the 18 largest validators held more than a third of the stake. On networks of this kind, that share is enough to stop blocks being confirmed.

What Solana shows

The same as any public blockchain: addresses, amounts, times and the program called. Because of the account model, a wallet's whole history collects on one address, token balances included. More in is crypto anonymous.

Risks

1. Price. SOL fell 50.1% over the year, more than bitcoin (−30.9%) and ether (−44.5%). It set its high of $293.31 on 19 January 2025 — the same day as the TRUMP meme coin, launched on Solana two days earlier.
2. Outages. Between 2021 and 2024 the network stopped for hours several times, most recently on 6 February 2024 for almost five hours.
3. Network. USDT on Solana and USDT on Tron are different tokens. A transfer on another network will not arrive where it is expected, so check the network with the recipient (TRC-20 vs ERC-20).
4. Fakes and meme coins. Anyone can create a token on Solana in a minute for pennies, including one with someone else's name. Check the token address, not the name.

FAQ

Can SOL be mined? No. New coins go only to validators and to those who delegated SOL to them.

Is SOL an altcoin? Yes, one of the largest (what are altcoins).

Is Solana fast because it is centralized? Partly the trade-off is real: running a validator takes powerful hardware, and 18 validators hold over a third of the stake.

Where we stand

The notrace.exchange form takes SOL, as well as USDT and USDC on Solana and on other networks.

• The payout leaves as two transfers to two addresses of yours, each with its own delay of 0 to 6 hours. If you want the coin and the amount to change too, choose a payout in another coin.
• While a delay runs, the funds are held by the service: section 8 of the terms says so.
• Before you pay, the order offers a letter signed with our PGP key stating what you send and the least you will receive.
• Our fee on 27 October 2026 was 0.5%; the current figure is on the FAQ page.

The Solana mixer page opens the form in SOL with the live minimum.