Abstract
In today’s world, centralized solutions dominate across various aspects of our daily lives. However, there’s a growing awareness of the limitations inherent in centralized systems and the practices of major corporations. Consequently, there’s been a significant surge in decentralized solutions, facilitated by blockchain technologies. Yet, decentralized solutions often struggle to achieve widespread adoption due to their lack of convenience and user-friendliness, which are crucial for mass distribution. Solana VM aims to address this issue.
Our team has curated a selection of the most practical and applicable technological innovations, leveraging them to develop decentralized products. Our priority has been to ensure that these products are user-friendly, accessible, and as intuitive as centralized alternatives, all while safeguarding users’ data and avoiding the creation of single points of authority or failure.
Through this approach, we aim to demonstrate to the public the myriad benefits of embracing decentralized solutions with Solana VM.
What is Solana VM?
Blockchain technology presents unparalleled decentralized asset preservation, immutable ledgers, and transparent permissionless systems. Within the Layer 1 (L1) blockchain ecosystem, two prominent contenders have emerged: Ethereum and Solana.
While Ethereum has solidified its position as the premier protocol for executing smart contracts, it faces notable technical limitations, particularly in terms of transactions per second (TPS) and time to finality (TTF). Additionally, transaction fees on Ethereum are relatively high. In response, a Layer 2 (L2) scaling ecosystem has arisen to alleviate these issues by offloading computation from the Ethereum network, sharing transaction costs, and utilizing the L1 as a secure settlement layer.
Solana, on the other hand, is engineered to support rapid, cost-effective transactions. This makes Solana an ideal choice for high-throughput, low-value transactions while ensuring transparency and immutability. As of Q1 2024, Solana has surpassed all other L1 blockchains in transaction volume.
However, this segmentation of the L1 landscape poses challenges for blockchain builders, with decentralized applications (dApps) becoming specialized and confined to specific blockchains, limiting access to users across ecosystems.
This whitepaper proposes a solution to these challenges. Solana VM protocol offers dApp developers the opportunity to scale existing Ethereum dApps by leveraging Solana as the primary settlement layer. Additionally, it facilitates the transfer of tokens traditionally associated with native L1 environments. For the first time, Ethereum-native dApps can tap into the user base of Solana.
Solana VM not only bridges the gap between Ethereum and Solana but, based on preliminary benchmarks, it emerges as the fastest EVM available. Moreover, Solana VM surpasses existing Ethereum L2 scaling solutions in terms of both speed and cost efficiency.
