What Is Solana? How SOL Works and Its Outage Record

Solana is a blockchain, a shared public record of transactions that many computers keep copies of and check against each other. People use it to send payments, run apps, and hold tokens, which are digital assets that represent ownership of other things. Its coin (SOL) pays the fee on every transaction, the charge for processing it.

Computers called validators check new transactions and add them to the record. Each one locks up SOL as a deposit first, which it can lose if it cheats. On 8 November 2026, 662 validators were active. The network has also stopped, most recently in February 2024.

People send payments and run apps, which Solana calls programs. A program is code that lives on the record. A transaction is a request to change the record, such as moving SOL from one holder to another or calling a program.

Each transaction carries a signature, the digital approval of the holder who authorises it.

For the first blockchain, see What Is Bitcoin? For another network that runs programs, see What Is Ethereum?

Every validator holds a copy of the record. A block is a batch of transactions added together. The network adds a block only after validators vote on it, meaning they signal acceptance.

Solana uses proof of stake. A validator locks up SOL as a deposit, called stake. The docs say the deposit is forfeited if malicious behaviour by the validator can be proven.

Validators take turns. The docs call each turn a slot. The validator with the turn, the leader, packs transactions into a block, while the others check it and vote. Votes count in proportion to stake.

The docs say SOL holders who do not run a validator can stake tokens with one and earn rewards.

We asked Solana's public node, an open computer anyone can query, for its validator list at about 08:35 UTC on 8 November 2026. UTC is Coordinated Universal Time, the world's reference time. It listed 697 validators: 662 voting and 35 that had stopped voting recently. We use the 662.

The 662 held 434.1 million staked SOL. That is 68.1% of the 637.2 million SOL in existence. Chart 1 shows how the staked SOL is spread.

The largest validator held 3.9% of the staked SOL. The 10 largest held 24.7%. The 18 largest held 34.3%, the fewest validators that together pass one third. The 40 largest held 50.5%, the fewest that pass one half.

So 662 validators vote, but 40 of them carry half the weight.

The docs say every transaction needs a fee in SOL. The base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature. A lamport is one-billionth of a SOL, so the fee is 0.000005 SOL per signature.

The docs split the base fee 50% burned, meaning destroyed for good, and 50% to the validator. A transaction can also carry an optional priority fee, which raises the chance the current leader puts it in a block first. All of the priority fee goes to the validator.

New SOL arrives through inflation, meaning the network creates new coins and pays them out. The docs set the rate at 8% a year at the start. Each year the rate falls by 15%, so each year's rate is 85% of the year before. The schedule stops falling at a long-term rate of 1.5%.

On that rule, 8% becomes 6.8% after one year and 1.57% after ten. The rate reaches 1.5% about 10.3 years in. Chart 2 plots the schedule.

On 8 November 2026, the network reported a rate of 3.57%. That matches what the schedule gives about 5.0 years in, by our calculation from the docs' rates.

The network reported that none of the new SOL went to a foundation. All of it went to validators and their stakers. The docs set no end to issuance, so supply has no fixed cap.

Alpenglow is an upgrade to how validators vote on blocks. The Solana Foundation says it went live at about 13:36 UTC on 21 October 2026. The Foundation's page gives a target of roughly 150 milliseconds (0.15 seconds) for a transaction to become final, meaning the network treats it as permanent.

The old voting took 12.8 seconds.

The page also says Proof of History no longer paces block production. Solana's white paper, written by Anatoly Yakovenko, put Proof of History at the centre of the original design. Its aim was to prove the order of transactions without trusting anyone's wall clock, meaning the time of day.

Picture a receipt roll printed one slip at a time, each slip made from the one before. A transaction stapled between slip 400 and the next must have arrived between them. The white paper describes the slips as a calculation run in sequence, so the order can be read off the sequence.

The Solana Foundation, Anza (a firm that builds Solana's main software), or the network's status page says the network stopped seven times. While it was stopped, it added no new transactions, so payments and app activity stopped too.

The table gives the date, length, and source wording for all seven.

Length is as the source states it, except 25 February 2023, which we calculated from the status page: the 05:46 UTC vote-only entry to the 01:28 UTC restart notice on 26 February. Source: Solana Foundation (14 December 2020 and 20 September 2021); Solana status page; Anza (9 February 2024)

The longest ran 19.7 hours, in February 2023. We counted it from the status page's 05:46 UTC entry on 25 February, when the network entered a vote-only mode, meaning validators kept voting but processed no payments. It ends at the page's 01:28 UTC notice on 26 February that the network had restarted.

The notice's posting time is the end, so 19.7 hours is an upper bound.

We do not count slowdowns. The status page lists many in 2022, labelled degraded performance.

The status page lists no incident after 6 February 2024. That was 1,006 days before 8 November 2026. Alpenglow is too recent to show whether it changes the record.

A crypto sleeve is a small group of up to five crypto-linked names the portfolio may hold alongside its other holdings. Our rules-based Macro & Megacaps Systematic Portfolio includes a crypto sleeve. SOL is one of its candidates. Multi-model Signals, our published model signals, covers Bitcoin.

For returns, swings, and worst falls against the two largest rivals, see Ethereum vs Bitcoin vs Solana.

In short: Solana is a blockchain where people send payments and run apps, paid for in SOL. Validators check the record after locking up SOL as a deposit. Alpenglow, an upgrade to how they vote, went live on 21 October 2026. The network stopped seven times from December 2020 to February 2024.

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Validators run Solana. These are computers that check new transactions and add them to the shared record, each after locking up SOL as a deposit. On 8 November 2026, 662 validators were voting. The 40 largest held 50.5% of the staked SOL. We did not test who owns those validators.

SOL pays the fee on every Solana transaction. The Solana docs give a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, or 0.000005 SOL. Validators also lock up SOL as a deposit, called stake. The network pays them rewards in new SOL, created under a schedule that started at 8% a year.

There were 637.2 million SOL in existence on 8 November 2026, according to the network's public node. The supply grows through inflation, which the network reported at 3.57% a year that day. The Solana docs set no end to issuance, so the supply has no fixed cap.

Yes. Solana has stopped seven times, between 4 December 2020 and 6 February 2024. The longest, up to 19.7 hours in February 2023, is measured from the status page's timestamps. The status page lists no incident after 6 February 2024, as checked on 8 November 2026.

Proof of History was a way for Solana's computers to agree on the order of transactions without trusting a wall clock, the time of day. Each step in a calculation depends on the one before. Since 21 October 2026, the Solana Foundation says it no longer paces block production.

DISCLAIMER: This article is intended for educational purposes only. Any information or analysis in this note does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Nothing in this note is intended to be investment advice, nor should it be relied upon to make investment decisions. Any opinions, analyses, or probabilities expressed in this note are those of the author as of the note's date of publication and are subject to change without notice.