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

aneukpineung78 (67)in SteemitCryptoAcademy • 3 years ago

This is my homework post for Steemit Crypto Academy Season 4 Week 4 for Professor @pelon53’s lesson Solana Blockchain.

Note : I performed this task on Windows 10 PC, Google Chrome.

Task 1 : Solana’s Proof of History (PoH)

^{Picture was created by me. The Solana logo was taken from https://solana.com/branding.}

The Proof of History (PoH) is the consensus technology created and used by Solana blockchain, in combination to its basic mechanism Proof of Stake (PoS), in the attempt to solve the general problem faced by the blockchain technology, the blockchain trilemma. The Proof of History has helped Solana in achieving the more speed (scalability, throughput) when compared to traditional blockchains. Solana, has been acknowledge as the fourth generation blockchain technology .

In traditional blockchains, a new transaction can only be processed after a period of time (called “block time”) has passed. The block times can be very large, they can take up to 10 minutes in the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus. It is to minimize the odds that a valid block is produced at a specific time by more that one validator. Proof of Stake consensus faces no such constraint, but it need a reliable timestamp so that a validator will be able to determine the order of the incoming blocks.

Previous PoS blockchains have come up with their solutions to this problem. One of the popular ways is to use a wallclock timestamp to tag each block. But, the problem is the timestamp will only be accurate within an hour or two.

In Solana’s Proof of History technique, cryptographic proofs are used by leader nodes to timestamp blocks. The cryptographic proofs timestamping is a “declaration” that some period of time has been passed since the last proof. The cryptographic proofs help nodes to work “ahead of their times”. The new block then is shared by the node to validator nodes to get the proofs verified. The key for Solana’s Proof of History’s success is “synchronization”, since the blocks can arrive at the validator nodes in any order. This synchronization guaranty lets Solana to be able to break blocks to some entries (smaller batches of transactions). The picture below, a screenshot from https://solscan.io/ (a Solana block explorer), shows us that block #98574491 was validated after block #98574489, the blockchain has “skipped” block #98574490.

^{The blockchain has “skipped” block #98574490.}

The idea of Proof of History is to cut (shorten) the block time by proofing ahead of time that some period of time has been passed, and that the blockchain is ready for a new block validation. The Proof of History is the Solana blockchain answer to solve the blockchain trilemma, to create a fast and scalable blockchain network without loosing or compromising the security dan decentralization aspects of blockchain technology. According to an article on solana.com, the implementation of the Proof of History currently has set the Solana to achieve block time at 800ms. That’s thousands time faster than the traditional PoW and PoS blockchains. Solana is known for the ability to handle more than 50 thousand transaction per second. Wow! No wonder some sources on the internet call it “super-fast blockchain” or something like that.

Task 2 : Solana Use Case Examples

At the time of writing, there were hundreds projects (companies) have been built on the Solana ecosystem (and counting), as seen on https://solana.com/ecosystem. The projects fall into various categories (one project can fall in tomore than one categories), among others are:

AMMs (Automated Market Maker), examples: 1sol, Cyclos, Raydium),
NFTs, examples: Lobster Shack, Metaplex, All-Art, MetaSafari,
DApps, examples: Aphid, Certify, King of Oceans,
DeFi, examples: Defi Land, Rickswap, DeFiner, Router Protocol,
DEX, examples: MoonletWallet, Serum, Nocte, Ninja Protocol,
Games, at the timeof the writing, only two games are available in the list: Pixel Dudes, and Solcery,
and much more.

Let’s take a look at some of those use cases.

2.a. Francium Protocol

^{Francium Protocol logo, recreated by me. The Francium Protocol logo was taken from the Francium Protocol official medium account.}

Francium Protocol, or famous by just Francium is a leveraged yield farming protocol built on top of Solana blockchain technology. It supports diverse yield strategies. The website homepage address is at https://francium.io/. The farming platform is accessible at https://francium.io/app/invest/farm. The platform is available for both DeFi Users (who are ready to go straight to farming activities) and Strategy Builder. The Strategy Builder was not accessible at the time of writing since it was still under development.

^{The farming protocol for DeFi users.}

^{The farming protocol for Strategy Builders, still in development.}

At the time of writing, as much as a total of USD5,265,670.00 value was locked in the pool. USDC deposit will earn the users a 17.71% APR, while the ORCA deposit as much as 147.51% APR.

Through an article released on September 25, on its official medium account’s Francium is informing that they have currently integrated three mainstream farming pools of Orca’s, which are SOL/USDC, ORCA/USDC, ORCA/SOL, and it is stating to continue to integrate more in the future. At the time of writing, I can see as much as 13 (thirteen) farming pools were available including the three that are based on Orca.

2.b. Solana Mango Markets

^{Mango Market logo, taken from https://mango.markets/.}

Mango Markets or famous by Mango basically is a decentralized trading platform, a Solana-based DEX. It adopts the cross-margin trading system and offers up to 5 times leverage and integrated limit orders. The trading activities are conducted based on the Serum DEX’s on-chain order book. Not only being a DEX, Mango also offers futures, spot market, and even swap.

^{The Mango Market website homepage screenshot.}

Mango Markets has it’s own token named Mango Markets, symbolized with MNGO. At the time of the writing, CoinMarketCap showed that the token was traded at USD0.2931, it was ranked #241 based on market capitalization domination. Last Wednesday, on a 24-hours token sale, Mango raised USD70 Million.

2.c All-Art Protocol

^{All-Art Protocol as seen on https://all.art/.}

All-Art Protocol (or All-Art) is the protocol that aims to provide liquidity pools for NFT, and helping creators in license rights. All-Art introduced new type of liquidity pool AMM (Automated Market Maker), which gave it the ability to provide constant liquidity for NFTs. In other words, All-Art Protocol is changing NFTs from “idle assets that are not generating any value” into “liquid assets that generates values for the owners from time to time”. It is said that this new type of liquidity pools is aimed to be the basis for a new infrastructure on NFTs market and will eventually power an evolution in digital art market. The new standard is named NFT-PRO. NFT-PRO embeds license rights into arts registered on blockchain and by that solves major problems of the current NFT model.

Task 3 : The SOLA Token Explanation

^{SOLA Token logo taken from https://solatoken.net/.}

SOLA Token is a Solana-based Decentralized Exchange (DEX) that has its own token with the same name symbolized with SOLA.

3.a. The SOLA Token DEX

SOLA Token DEX website is at https://solatoken.net/. The SOLA Token DEX motto is “Faster, Cheaper and more Powerful DeFi”.

^{Screenshot of SOLA Token web homepage : https://solatoken.net/.}

The three aspects that SOLA Token DEX is proud of are:

It has a smooth connection with Serum’s central limit order book, so it is possible to view all order flow and liquidity,
It has best price swaps, and
It has high liquidity.

Solana.com at this page wrote that SOLA Token has “significantly more efficient asset management”. SOLA Token also provides automatic liquidity distribution based on automated market maker (AMM) technology.

^{Screenshot of SOLA Token DEX webpage.}

At the time of writing, more than 40 token pairs are tradeable on the SOLA Token DEX, including SOLA/USDC, RAY/USDT, AAVE/USDT, BTC/USDC, BTC/USDT, ETH/USDC, ETH/USDT, and USDT/USDC.

3.b. The SOLA Token Coin

The SOLA governance token is still “very young”. It was issued on August 9, 2021, (5 months after the Solana blockchain was released). And the token address is FYfQ9uaRaYvRiaEGUmct45F9WKam3BYXArTrotnTNFXF, you can see it on Solana explorer here. At the time of writing, SOLA Token ranked #1687 based on market capitalization, according to CoinGecko. The table below will help us get a better understanding on the SOLA governance Token (note: the data was acquired on Sunday, September 26th). At the time of writing, the token was not on the CoinMarketCap listing.

Item	Value
Price	USD0.074235
Market Capitalization	USD 2,086,081
Market Cap Rank	#1687
Total Supply	27,153,077
Circulating Supply	27,153,077 (100%)
Maximum Supply	27,153,077
All-Time High	USD0.119473
All-Time High Date	Sep 11, 2021
All-Time Low	USD0.00328164
All-Time Low Date	Sep 09, 2021

^{Highlighted information on SOLA Token acquired from CoinGecko on September 28.}

^{The SOLA Token governance coin all-time price chart as seen on coingecko.}

Task 4 : The Solana Blockchain Operation Interruption

4.a. When

The Solana blockchain saw an interruption to its operation on Tuesday, September 14, 2021. The blockchain experienced a 17-hour high-profile outage which later referred to as “resource exhaustion” by Solana management, starting from early Tuesday, Eastern time. The outage said to has impacted everything built on Solana, but only on layer 1.

4.b. Why

According to Solana founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, as shown on his Twitter status, the disruption was caused by Tuesday token offering held by Grape Protocol (Raydium IDO) through bot trading.

^{Anatoly Yakovenko’s tweet on the Tuesday 17-hour outage.}

The Grape Protocol’s token offering has caused the transaction flood that pushed the Solana network past its limit. Theoretically, Solana blockchain is able to process around 50 thousand transactions per second, but the Tuesday Grape Protocol’s token offering has created a demand of around 400 thousand transactions per second. Multiple nodes were knocked offline by a forking that was triggered by the transaction flood. The blockchain activity was frozen at block #96538485. Nothing can be done by the users at the time of disruption rather than wait and see.

^{The project’s tweets at the time of disruption.}

4.c. The Impact

It is not yet known in detail what impact the disruption on September 14 had on Solana's network, but on Monday 20 September, Coingecko noted Solana's price fell by 12.5%, but the decline in cryptocurrency prices last week was also experienced by other altcoins such as Cardano (ADA), Binance Coin, and Ripple (XRP). ^Source

Task 5 : The Last Block And The Block Time Calculation

5.a. The Solana Blockchain Explorers

There are several Solana block explorers available to use, including SolScan, SolanaScan, Solana Beach, and the famous official explorer. For this task I used the Solana Beach explorer, because I found it provides more comprehensive and detailed information when compared to other explorers.

^{Solana Beach is the more comprehensive and detailed Solana block explorer, and it is user-friendly.}

For this task, I used the Recent Blocks section of the explorer, for sure.

^{The Recent Block section on Solana Beach.}

5.b. The Last Block

The last block generated at the time of writing, as shown at the image above, was block #98580078. The block was validated by Staked.

^{The detail page of block #98580078.}

Among information showed on the detail page of block #98580078 (as seen in the image above) are:

Item	Value
Block Hash	35q5WXRm7WcwnrR57ig2C12iTa5BoL6GgyJpcFR9sTm5
Previous Block Hash	Di9DcxWnpGkw6pzW7YJmgvHknp6gp9SoaJnMVJT7rNEq
Number of Transactions	355
Transaction success rate	97.18%
Total fees	0.001785SOL
Validator rewards	0.000891281SOL

^{The highlighted information on the detail page of block #98580078.}

5.c. Block Generation Calculation

To calculate block generation time, I once again used the Recent Blocks table. Let’s see.

The table above shows that the time gap between the oldest block in the table (block #98580070) and the newest one (#98580078) was 5 seconds. And the distance between the two blocks is 8 blocks. So, from this table it can be concluded that 8 blocks were validated within 5 seconds, or 1.6 blocks per second, which means that a new block was generated every 37.5 seconds.