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Solana Labs completes a $314M private token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz

151 points by nikita 5y ago

kgraves 5y ago
This is how the scam begins, the downfall of Solana. It is yet another pump and dump just like all of these coins. Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. We seen them all before, ransomware becoming rampant, massive waste of electricity and resources and now the pandora's box can't be closed quicker enough.
- prox 5y ago
  Can’t agree more. The tech is interesting, but it is the same greed behind it which is old as mankind. It solves absolutely nothing, does nothing of value and adds none. Crypto is quickly becoming a failure of immense proportions. The externalities of cryptocurrencies include: Massive carbon emissions. Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran. Tax evasion. Laundering the proceeds of crime, including the drug trade, theft and fraud, and armed robbery. An epidemic of ransomware. A wave of securities fraud targeting the greedy and vulnerable. Shortages of products including graphics cards, hard disks, and chips in general as limited fab capacity is diverted to mining ASICS. Abuse of free tiers of Web services. Noise pollution.
  - baby 5y ago
    Obviously many people disagree. Just to pick on one issue, carbon emission is negligible (unless you talk about bitcoin). Many people also rely on transfers of cryptocurrency. Just not you or your entourage.
    - nikanj 5y ago
      Obviously people who have money to launder don’t like the idea of stopping money laundering. The same for people doing drug trade, avoiding international sanctions, tax evasion, etc.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - mjfern 5y ago
      Yes, the people who disagree are those pumping and dumping and the bag holders. And cryptocurrency mining consumes as much electricity annually as the country of Argentina. Country scale emissions is not at all negligible, particularly in light of catastrophic global warming.
      - baby 5y ago
        That’s your opinion. And I guess that’s all you have when you can’t talk about the tech.
        kgraves 5y ago
        In reality, nobody actually cares about the tech, Not even the VCs care, they're just buying into a project for an exit. The general public are even more oblivious to the tech, all they want. to know is 'How do I 100x my money? When is coin X going to the moon?'. They all want the 'moon' more than the tech.
        baby 5y ago
        I care. I thought HN would as well.
        kgraves 5y ago
        You are in the .00001% minority that cares about the tech and everyone else is making millions on the backs of cryptocurrencies.
      - anonporridge 5y ago
        Notice what you did here is the same subtle disinformation tactic that every major news story about crypto mining employs. 1. Compare crypto energy usage to something huge (small country, big tech companies, etc). 2. Don't put that into context of whole of human civilization. It's <1% of global electricity consumption. 3. Don't clarify that this is comparing to electricity consumption, excluding other major energy uses like transportation, heating, and shipping which are generally non electric and necessarily carbon emitting. 4. Imply that cryptocurrency electricity usage is creating tons of carbon emissions, even though it consumes electricity and only seeks the cheapest source. When it comes to carbon emissions and the resulting climate catastrophe, we could shut down every cryptocurrency tomorrow and we'd still be fucked. Attacking cryptocurrency for it's energy use is a horrible waste of political and social capital that could be put toward actually solving the problem rather than engaging in moral masturbation.
  - miohtama 5y ago
    Please read the article and study the underlying technology. Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts. Solana uses proof of stake and does not have the energy consumption issue, or does not use graphics card. It is cost and energy efficient alternative for Bitcoin and other proof of work public blockchains. More about the history of proof of stake here: https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/ https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/
    - dvt 5y ago
      > Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts. You expertly avoid all arguments except that Solana uses proof of stake. Who cares. Prox's point still stands: folks will continue to use blockchain-powered "pseudo-currencies" for illegal drugs, murder-for-hire, money laundering, ransomware, and speculation. No one's buying groceries with BTC.
      - haswell 5y ago
        Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash. This thread is not about BTC…
        crummy 5y ago
        Isn't that why we don't have $10,000 notes? Or even $500? To make illegal activity more difficult?
        dvt 5y ago
        > Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash. You can't be serious. Ad hoc cash transfers are regulated (can't bring more than $10k across borders without declaring, for example), supply is limited, and bills have literal serial numbers on them.
        haswell 5y ago
        Crypto is a relatively new technology. Illegal money is as old as civilization. Yes, there are regulations to make it harder to carry out elicit business, but that doesn’t change history, nor does it invalidate the point I was trying to make.
  - vmception 5y ago
    is this copypasta for every crypto thread?
  - schrijver 5y ago
    > Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran Not a big fan of crypto, but this is one of the less convincing arguments against it—as the current situation where the US more or less gets to decide who are the rogue states, because of the global financial system’s dependency on the US dollar, doesn’t seem all that great. For example, the US have ruled: “Saudi Arabia good, Iran bad” for a long time now. Since the signing of the nuclear treaty with Iran, the EU had been trying to normalise trade relations, but this has proven exceedingly complicated since the US pulled out, since most financial transactions at some point pass through a US based financial institution that are beholden to sanctions towards Iran. I don’t think crypto is the ideal answer for this problem, I would prefer a financial system that can deal with multiple fiat currencies and has less reliance on the USD, but that won’t happen overnight. cf https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-finance-idUSKBN29O1ZI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-finance-idUSKBN29O1ZI
- haswell 5y ago
  The problem with this comment is that it ignores advances in crypto meant to address the primary downsides. I’m 100% in agreement that some aspects of some crypto currencies are extremely problematic and should/must be stopped. But generalizing all crypto the way this comment does is not helpful or constructive. Recognize the nuance, and be specific about the issues.
  - kgraves 5y ago
    Well, what are the upsides? I can't think of any that our existing system can already do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- atlgator 5y ago
  Not surprised Mark Andreesen and Ben Horowitz are at the center of it. They were on Clubhouse shilling NFTs all pandemic.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    this is ridiculous. If either Horowitz or Andreessen are into something there is usually a pretty good chance that the thing is going to be big. pay attention.
    - kgraves 5y ago
      So Clubhouse has gone pretty well has it? Considering that Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Spotify and even Facebook is getting in on Clubhouse's format. Also, every time a VC comes along and does this with cryptocurrencies, there is almost a guaranteed complete dump in the price coin, only hurting the general public.
- coolestguy 5y ago
  Spoken like someone talking about immigration who knows only what they've seen on Fox News. You're so unbelievably short sighted about a tech innovation. There's more to crypto than bitcoin & greed is an unsolvable issue in humanity, not a crypto bug,
  - baby 5y ago
    I agree with this comment. The FUD on HN about crypto and fraud is disappointing to say the least. Impossible to have a good technical discussion around cryptocurrencies because of that. I’m going to start flagging these.
    - rantwasp 5y ago
      it’s not impossible. just harder. also, remember that hn has a bit of an echo chamber effect. I’ve been downvoted over time for expressing unpopular opinions that turn out to be mostly true. i don’t care. i’m here with an open minded and will listen to the other side arguments. X is dangerous and must be stopped is not an argument. You need to articulate why it’s dangerous and exactly what you mean when you say that and when you say it must be stopped. also, crypto is not going anywhere. If you cannot see that maybe you should start looking into it a bit deeper
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Daishiman 5y ago
      In sorry but I don't really see any crypto advocates talking about the tech at all. It's always at some undetermined point in the future, always products that solve problems created by crypto, and never anything consumer based or meant to actually reduce friction to make it a usable product for banking. Crypto advocates' ideas of problems in the financial system have no mapping to the issues that people working in real fintech and its consumers identify.
      - baby 5y ago
        It’s out there. Up to you to read the stuff and ask questions.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, but this response has such a reflexive, repetitive, generic-indignant response to every remotely related topic that it is now 100% predictable, and that makes it off-topic for HN. We only want intellectually curious conversation here, and curiosity and predictability are antithetical. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I absolutely don't mean to pick on you personally—it's a systemic problem. Also, threads are a co-creation of comments and upvotes, and reflexive upvotes are by far the bigger problem. If you or anyone wants further explanation about what we are/aren't hoping for in HN threads, the following principles and the associated links should help: Curiosity withers under repetition: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Generic discussion is not interesting, at least not on internet forums: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... We want reflective rather than reflexive conversation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Diffs are what make an HN conversation interesting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
  - jachee 5y ago
    What good does suppression of opposition do?
    - dang 5y ago
      It's not about suppressing opposition, it's about comment quality. I'm sure there are many interesting ways to express opposition. Predictable/generic comments are internet noise. Reducing noise is good for signal/noise ratio.
  - cotelletta 5y ago
    Which of these principles demands you let a cabal of intersectionalists flag their enemies off the front page? Just curious where the intellectual curiosity and lack of reflexiveness comes in. I ask because if there's one thing I've noticed, it's that these people are unable to tell the difference between low quality arguments and low status arguments. Consistently.
- mssundaram 5y ago
  > Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. I don't think that they're perfect, or that they're good for everything, but your statement is hyperbolic.
  - kgraves 5y ago
    Well there isn't, and I mean it. They do way more harm than good. There isn't anything wrong with using existing secure and regulated methods (Paypal, Bank Transfer, etc), Cryptocurrencies claim to be decentralised when underneath they ARE still centralised and manipulated, especially Bitcoin. I will only admit it has been a good run, but now it is time to for the regulators to step in.
    - noidesto 5y ago
      What about the unbanked? People in high-interest countries? Cross-border payments? You present a strong claim that they "ARE still centralized and manipulated, especially Bitcoin". Please present concrete evidence.
      - kgraves 5y ago
        You have Transferwise and Western Union for this, the latter being there for over 100 years and still in use. Before you argue about WU fees, Bitcoin's fees are no better than Western Union's, hence Transferwise. > You present a strong claim that they "ARE still centralized and manipulated, especially Bitcoin". Please present concrete evidence. Princeton University concluded in a study that the bitcoin network is 50% controlled by 5 of the 6 bitcoin mining companies [0] [1] so how is Bitcoin decentralised If it is becoming more centralised by mining organisations and if most of the hashing power is centralised in China? That seems to be that means that Bitcoin isn't really decentralised then no? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/bitcoin-s-network-operations-are-controlled-by-five-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/bitcoin-s... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf
        5y ago
- strangescript 5y ago
  People have been saying this about crypto for 10 years and bitcoin 30x'ed despite all the negativity, with tons of big institutions loading up on it behind the scenes. It's here to stay. When you buy something at the store, the cashier doesn't question you how you got the money. They don't care. All they know is the currency is the proof that you did something, or sold something that other people valued. Valuing a unique crypto hash is no more ridiculous than someone valuing a painting, old baseball cards, ancient pottery and all the other random stuff people collect and trade that are nothing more than a decoration. Well, except crypto completely mobile, easy to exchange and can't be taken from you like all other the assets we have been exchanging since the beginning of time.
  - kgraves 5y ago
    > People have been saying this about crypto for 10 years and bitcoin 30x'ed despite all the negativity, with tons of big institutions loading up on it behind the scenes. It's here to stay. The main goal of bitcoin is to be a decentralised peer to peer cryptocurrency, it has completely failed in its original purpose to become that in 10 years. And when more people realise how inefficient it is in terms of energy, transactions, fees and utility, the quicker the price will go down.
    - qualudeheart 5y ago
      Monero fulfills the original promise of bitcoin.
      - kgraves 5y ago
        Right, so Bitcoin failed in its original purpose then no?
        baby 5y ago
        Why are we talking about bitcoin when there are 100 more advanced cryptocurrencies?
- elevenoh 5y ago
  >Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. Do you truly believe this? Or is it tongue in cheek? Crypto ain't going away. And nothing will stop it. It'll encroach on all industries long term. It's global open competitive darwinism playing out before our eyes. No domain on earth is as open & competitive as crypto.
  - kgraves 5y ago
    > Do you truly believe this? YES.
ubavic 5y ago
I don’t even know what this article is about, but I noticed digits of the π.
darkotic 5y ago
they got the whole pi
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- egman_ekki 5y ago
  let's just hope they won't end up in a pi hole...
bobthepanda 5y ago
What's the practical difference between this and issuing shares? Like, can you just issue coins at a 1:1 ratio to shares to skirt securities regulations? It smells fishy.
- _rpd 5y ago
  > The token sale, which was completed earlier this year, was only made available to off-shore investors There does seem to be some regulatory testing going on here.
  - JaggerFoo 5y ago
    The lead VC and others are US based, or have operations in the US. Were they able to segment investments, so that only non-US investor money flowed into the sale? Does having US-based VC organizations participate create a nexus for the SEC to have authority? It will be interesting to follow the legalities of this, so perhaps others can model the sale and use to successfully float new tokens without scrutiny by the SEC. Or does the "Duck Rule" not apply to this sale? What say you Gary Gensler?
    - vmception 5y ago
      Master funds are typically not US organizations, and they are also accredited investors. There is no need to segment non-US money. Organizations typically do investor quality tests compliant with US exemptions even if they exclude US investors and also file Regulation D exemption notices. Here is a quick google search for "Solana Reg D" showing the one from 2018 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1735643/000173564318000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1735643/000173564318... > It will be interesting to follow the legalities of this, so perhaps others can model the sale and use to successfully float new tokens without scrutiny by the SEC. This has never been an issue. The only issue the SEC has ever had was with token transactions that did not file any regulatory exemption and sold to unaccredited investors. Many people want clarity about the ability to still do that. Finally, the SEC regulates transactions not assets. The irony is that some transactions create perpetual securities where all transactions of that type of asset is always a securities transaction to the point where the distinction is not useful. But this is important to understand when you are trying to do a securities transaction for something that is not intended to be a security and how the SEC will react. Being deemed a perpetual security is untenable for crypto assets because there had not been liquid places to trade crypto securities and every centralized user needs to be a registered broker dealer (lol). A transaction itself can be a securities transaction while the ensuing asset is not. The SEC has never had an issue with that reality and hasn't penalized anyone for this kind of conversion.
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
Interesting. This seems to complement the recent $100M Arrington XRP investment into Algorand https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/arrington-algo-growth-fund-100million https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/arrington-algo-growt... You know the game's getting serious when the sharky VC's smell their new blood money in the water and start tossing around 9 figure stacks.
Aeolun 5y ago
This sounds exactly like Ethereum. What makes this so unique. Also: > biggest crypto hackathon 100, instead of 50 participants I’m sure.
- lopatin 5y ago
  Being able to do 50,000 tx per second with fees at fractions of a penny is what differentiates this from Ethereum. This makes things such as truly real time, decentralized exchanges feasible.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Does that 50k tps come at the cost of any type of centralization? I don't know much about Solana, but that usually seems to be the trade off with other crypto that has advertised comparable speeds.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      It does make it centralized, just take a look at the spec requirements to see how unrealistic it is to expect high participation (let alone technical knowledge) https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs
      - EMM_386 5y ago
        Hardware is always improving and costs drop ... isn't it only a matter of time until these requirements are nothing?
        kevingadd 5y ago
        Do you expect the requirements to run a node to stay flat even as network usage increases and the history grows longer?
baby 5y ago
Congrats to Solana. Does someone understand how their consensus protocol works? I heard it’s quite efficient.
ralph84 5y ago
> select individual investors like Boys Noize If this isn't a sign of a bubble I don't know what is.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  It's worth pointing out that Alyssa Milano and MC Hammer were early investors in Square haha. But then again, I mean, it's a crypto business now so.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    MC Hammer, on crypto: Can’t touch this!
- vmception 5y ago
  you should read about some SPAC deals then
- nl 5y ago
  From April 2011: "Is Ashton Kutcher's recent investment in Blekko an indicator of a technology bubble in Silicon Valley?"[1] Turns out that no - 2011 wasn't a bubble in technology in Silicon Valley. For example Amazon stock price was around $200, and is now over $3000. Blekko was later acquired by IBM. [1] https://www.quora.com/Is-Ashton-Kutchers-recent-investment-in-Blekko-an-indicator-of-a-technology-bubble-in-Silicon-Valley https://www.quora.com/Is-Ashton-Kutchers-recent-investment-i...
furyofantares 5y ago
I wonder if they negotiated up from some boring number of hundreds of millions of dollars to arrive at pi-hundred-million, or did they negotiate down to it? And was anyone advocating for 420M?
dang 5y ago
All: please don't post shallow, reflexive reactions to a story like this, even if you're sure you're right. Such reactions are 100% predictable (e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174), and predictability hurts more than rightness helps [0]. Predictable discussions are tedious and invariably lead to worse—for example, tedious discussions turn nasty because that's the only thing the mind has left to amuse itself with [1]. What we want: reflective [2], specific, difference-based [3] responses, coming from slower cognitive processes like absorbing new information and thinking about it. That's what produces a discussion which hasn't been had before, and those are the curious discussions. They may be less exciting in the sensational-indignant way, but that sort of excitement is not the curiosity which HN exists for [4], and we all know it gets boring after a while. Scorched earth is not interesting [5]. p.s. I know nothing and have no opinion about the topic of the story; I just know HN threads and can spot a brewing disaster when I see one. The last 700 (let's say) cryptocurrency-related threads have all been the same flamewar. That's enough of those; we're ready to move to the next exercise now. Edit: well done everyone! Much better. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [5] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- dang 5y ago
  This is a stub for replies, so as not to take the thread further off topic.
mgh2 5y ago
Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492616
rowaweigh 5y ago
Can someone explain what is proof of history? I tried to read the white paper but don't understand what PoH is supposed to achieve or how it interacts with proof of stake.
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  I tried to read the whitepaper too. It's either total nonsense or I'm just not getting it. "Proof of History" appears to mean that trusted verifiers maintain the network.
  - Zamicol 5y ago
    It's a subset of PoS. It's totally marketing. "Our PoS is so novel it deserves it's own name."
- a1371 5y ago
  PoH is essentially just PoW: more blocks mean more time has spent. I don't know why they just named it something different. Since SOL is not really decentralized, the validators can communicate a lot faster. So that's the difference with a usual blockchain where the latency is higher.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    It appears quite different than PoW, which is how it is able to boast so much higher throughput. https://tokens-economy.gitbook.io/consensus/chain-based-proof-of-capacity-space/proof-of-history https://tokens-economy.gitbook.io/consensus/chain-based-proo... https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-explained-by-a-water-clock-e682183417b8 https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-explained-by... I agree it doesn’t seem very decentralized at the moment (not many validators and most support coming from the foundation) but that may change if the platform is able to scale.
    - keymone 5y ago
      PoW has nothing to do with throughput.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mattdesl 5y ago
It’s good to see more research and development funds being invested in alternative consensus mechanisms beyond PoW/PoS. Solana looks interesting given it’s high transaction throughput and novel PoH algorithm - assuming it can scale in a decentralized way beyond the support of its foundation. Though, unfortunately it still seems quite challenging to run a Solana validator (which ultimately defines the health & decentralization of the chain). The current specs and docs are pretty daunting last I checked; hopefully that can be improved in time. Edit: I found this article to be a good introduction to the idea of PoH. It appears Solana is a mix of PoH (the novel high throughput validation mechanism) and PoS (used to incentivize validation and penalize negative behaviour). https://lsmod.medium.com/what-makes-solana-the-fastest-public-blockchain-cb8ffde1a7f4 https://lsmod.medium.com/what-makes-solana-the-fastest-publi...
- Vespasian 5y ago
  I'm quite interested in this topic. Does PoH encourages the "excessive" use of hardware and energy like PoW or PoTaS (chia) does? I'd be very interested in any solution which scales its resource usage with usability/throughput rather than token price. (I'm probably missing the correct terms)
  - SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
    Yes, it is PoW, plus brilliant marketing.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    I haven’t looked too deeply at it yet - but I don’t think it would lead to more excessive energy costs than PoW. It’s using PoS in addition to their PoH validation algorithm; and you have to “stake” or lock some amount of tokens up in order to validate and earn rewards. So you wouldn’t simply be able to spin up hundreds of validators (GPUs) because you’d quickly have no funds left to stake.
  - dlubarov 5y ago
    I wouldn't expect PoH to lead to much energy use, since nodes are evaluating a single hash chain. Since the computation can't be parallelized, computational throughput isn't a factor; only latency is.
Animats 5y ago
Solana has an interesting technology. It's sort of a modernized Ethereum. High transaction rate, low transaction cost, more scalable, and proof of stake. Features Ethereum was supposed to have by now, but still doesn't. Programs can be stored on the blockchain. They're written in, of all things, Berkeley Packet Filter bytecode. (No, they don't run inside the Linux kernel. I hope.) Programs can be written in Rust and compiled. How secure this will turn out to be for their "smart contracts" is an open question at this time. So far, I can't find any working applications for Solana that do something outside the crypto space. Like, say, replacing domain registrars. There's some kind of identity service, but it seems to be tied to Twitter. There's The Media Network, but it doesn't work yet. ("The Media Network is an open source, decentralized and censorship-resistant live streaming hosting protocol. More coming soon.") Not seeing "AirBnB for Solana", or "Uber for Solana", or "offshore realty for Solana", or even "concert ticket scalping for Solana". This is a problem. It doesn't really do anything yet.
- JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
  >Etherium You mean ethereum right?
- kaspern 5y ago
  Audius is one such example: https://medium.com/audius/audius-selects-solana-to-scale-community-owned-music-streaming-8a868db644eb https://medium.com/audius/audius-selects-solana-to-scale-com...
  - Animats 5y ago
    That deal was announced last October, but does not seem to be working yet. Or even in test. Searching the Audius API docs returns zero references to Solana.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  Why would you even need Airbnb or Uber for Solana? What problem does either solve? This remains a fundamental problem with crypto: we're 13 years in and the only practical use cases remain speculation and money laundering. Even DeFi seems to consistent mostly of navel gazing (crypto derivatives etc) and leverage.
metastart 5y ago
Solana with its proof of history and performance sounds extremely cool. The performance relative to network size also looks really good. The general idea strikes me as a great insight, though I have just an intuitive grasp of the idea (I haven't looked into the white paper). Proof of history seems to be based around proof of time -- a fundamental problem in physics (inspired Einstein) is defining time and that usually is via synchrony. It seems here that's defined by assigning a function which takes a certain amount of time and something that can't be pre-computed. I'm not sure how the parameters to compute are determined every second or fraction of a second -- but it sounds like a modified proof of work where the computing and energy burn may not scale as the value or size of the network does (unlike bitcoin to date). Building a network fundamentally around timestamps also makes sense for a ledger. The price of Solana and every other cryptocurrency has gone wayyyyy up this year...no comment about any of that except that for almost all crypto (maybe excepting Bitcoin), it is driven by speculation with limited usage in legal markets and dominant usage in illegal markets. If crypto disappeared from the world today, the only thing that would change is cybercrime would reduce by at least half...maybe more hehe. That doesn't detract, though, from what look like quite innovative technical achievements by Solana!
- mech422 5y ago
  >>If crypto disappeared from the world today, the only thing that would change is cybercrime would reduce by at least half...maybe more hehe Yeah - cuz no one hacked banks, cut fraudulent POs, or any of the other scams before crypto. It used to be said banks wouldn't report or prosecute hacks for fear losing public trust, so how common it was is speculation. That was a cheap shot for an otherwise interesting post :-P P.S. My favorite 'bank hack' was the coder that changed a banks interest calculations to deposit all the factions of pennies of calculated interest to accounts he controlled. Because it was less then a penny, the bank couldn't account for it and he had something like $4 million before he was caught. After that, we had to start using accumulator buckets for calcing the interest.. edit: s/would/wouldn't/
  - neRok 5y ago
    > Yeah - cuz no one hacked banks, cut fraudulent POs, or any of the other scams before crypto. OP was probably referring to attacks such as ransomware, because if you don't have an anonymous way to receive payment, then there is less incentive to do the crime in the first place.
applepple 5y ago
Interesting. It reminds me of Capitalisk https://capitalisk.com/ https://capitalisk.com/ except without quantum resistance and harder to setup.
a1371 5y ago
Grab a beverage HN! This one might get a bit long: There is a saying that "Engineering is finding the best compromises". You know about the Crypto Trilemma: Secure (S), Fast (F), Decentralized (D). Think of it as you have 15 eggs (I show them with 0) and 3 baskets. For Bitcoin/ETH, it may look something like this: S: 00000 F: 00000 D: 00000 When we say Fast, think of it as "fast for the transaction fee you spend". So a cheaper network is somewhat considered a faster one too. Bitcoin Cash was not happy with the speed of BTC, so they went with: S: 00000 F: 0000000 D: 000 But not all these 3 are "perceived" equally. Usually people only see speed, so for a new blockchain to "look" impressive, it can do something like: S: 0 F: 0000000000000 D: 0 EOS and XRP are examples of this approach. Basically, AWS with extra steps (not very decentralized). For EOS, everyone votes for iirc 12 nodes to do all the transaction processing until the next election. Let's look at Solana's claim on "Proof Of History". Wondering why other networks did not do an update if it's a great idea. Looking at their dev docs, they introduce this concept of "Cluster", initiated by "Leaders" where "Validators" join them and and "Clients" send transactions to. > [clusters] simply ignore the existence of the other. Transactions sent to the wrong one are quietly rejected. So they are breaking down the blockchain into small Validator groups. You have to know which Cluster you want to contact. That's... a compromise. It's not even comparable with ETH or the internet where you have this massive pool of validators that all participate over the same network. But ok, let's go with the compromise. Then the issues start to emerge. When there are clusters, what happens to the network hash rate? is it divided up? then someone can easily come in and 51% the clusters one by one? Well, they have to work around that. Let's see. > Additional validators then register with any registered member of the cluster. Ok, so, if I have a cluster where I know all the Validators, I can collude with them to just ignore any new Validators from coming in? > A validator receives all entries from the leader and submits votes confirming those entries are valid... Clients send transactions to any validator's Transaction Processing Unit (TPU) port. If the node is in the validator role, it forwards the transaction to the designated leader. If I'm the leader, can I censor a transaction coming from a Validator? Or perhaps I see a transaction that will move the market, can I sneak in a transaction in my own benefit before broadcasting that one to my validators? This just kind of a bank. On a more humane note, I listened to Solana's podcast and I am annoyed that they were dunking on ETH and acted so egotistically "we are new like electric car... people say we are so smart". The blockchain speed/scale limitations are just hard to solve the right way, it's disingenuous to discredit truly brilliant people for your own tech. So maybe I'm dismissive of something that's lying underneath. For what it's worth, Vitalik recently has talked about many of these limitations. Still, good on Solana for providing legible documentation.
awaythrowact 5y ago
Questions for Solana bulls from a crypto noob: 1) ETH bulls say that Solana is not really decentralized. It achieves scalability by limiting the network to only a handful of validators; why not just use AWS at that point? Why are they wrong? 2) ETH bulls say that security of a proof-of-stake is driven by total coin market cap; the more cap, the more expensive an attack. This makes ETH more secure than Solana. ETH has an unbreakable first mover advantage for this reason, they say. 3) ETH bulls say that ETH plus Polygon (or similar level two solution) is just as scalable as solana, while retaining the above two advantages of ETH. Why is that wrong?
- baby 5y ago
  PoS security driven by market cap is like saying that the richer the top 1% is and the more they’ll be incentivized to protect their funds. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it throws out a lot of other factors out the window. For example, who is this top 1% and how much do they care about the crypto.
  - albntomat0 5y ago
    Honest question: How is that different from proof of work, where those with significant resources (1%, a nation, etc) can spend significantly on mining equipment?
    - awaythrowact 5y ago
      My understanding is, proof of stake is not more secure than proof of work. Reason for PoS are efficiency, speed of transaction, lower gas fees, less environmental impact, etc. (Of course there can be secure PoS, insecure PoS, secure PoW, insecure PoW…)
      - yokem55 5y ago
        Polygon basically checkpoints a spreadsheet onto the eth chain on an interval, but there is no way to guarantee that there weren't any shenanigans between the checkpoints. This is a big improvement over say BSC which does no such thing, but it isn't the security of a true eth L2. Real L2's can prove that their output to L1 is legitimate either through zero knowledge cryptographic proofs (loopring, zksync) or through a game theory fraud check (optimism, arbitrum).
comodore_ 5y ago
The hardware requirements wrt memory to run a validator node are just insane https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs
- lucasyvas 5y ago
  Holy, you weren't kidding. I had to read it three times to make sure my brain got it right.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Exactly why it'll never be decentralized (centralized team and private investments aside)
- jtsiskin 5y ago
  ~$11,000 a year on GCP according to https://gcpinstances.info/?cost_duration=annually https://gcpinstances.info/?cost_duration=annually, for just the instance, if you commit up front to a full year. Then add on storage and ingress/egress traffic. And this is without the GPU requirement yet.
  - anonymoushn 5y ago
    Or like 1/10 of that at Hetzner
- asdf3331 5y ago
  Remember when people claimed that the bitcoin block size couldn't be increased because we would sacrifice decentralization? Well look where we are now...
- wmf 5y ago
  It would be interesting to calculate $/TPS instead of using sticker shock as a metric.
- fuzzybear3965 5y ago
  Yeah, it's true. The claim/theory/working hypothesis is that technological scaling will reduce the cost of a node over subsequent decades so that running a node becomes more affordable, increasing the decentralization of the network.
rank0 5y ago
I will always fundamentally distrust blockchain protocols where a “private token sale” or something similar is possible. If we are truly trying to create a new decentralized financial system, why are we letting corporate entities build and control the protocols? Even if it does work, well just end up coming full circle and in 100 years there will be a new movement to dethrone the ethereum/solana/algorand elites all over again. What does it matter if solana labs validators run the financial system rather than JP Morgan? Neither are democratic or exist to serve the public. At least with Bitcoin or other PoW systems anyone can participate in the network...
- kgraves 5y ago
  This. And to think that I was the crazy one for calling “private token sales” for what it is, a scam. Only to be suppressed further down in the thread. We shouldn't be celebrating this. EDIT: dang is here, picking on me and flagging this comment as I gave a substantiated Princeton study of my claims in my comment [0], I'm making my point and he is picking on me for some reason. I linked to studies and articles about my points for readers to look into further. How is that 'unsubstantive'? There are more unsubstantive comments in this thread that have no evidence and are outright baseless, but obviously dang won't go after those. > I absolutely don't mean to pick on you personally... you are, please do not patronise me on this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497742
  - dang 5y ago
    Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You're not being "suppressed", just asked not to lower the quality of the thread with generic, shallow, predictable dismissals. We don't care what your position is, we care about the quality of these threads, and especially about not having the same wretched, copy/pasted flamewar over and over. It's entirely possible to make substantial arguments in favor of the same position, as rank0 just demonstrated—and that's totally fine.
  - dang 5y ago
    It's not my intention to pick on you and I'm sorry it feels that way. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. It's definitely not personal—moderation is extremely repetitive and you're far from the only person that I've replied like that to. From my perspective the principles are pretty much the same everywhere and it's just the job. I certainly understand that it feels different on the other side because the interaction is so asymmetrical. Since your edit is replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 and even quoting from it, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have posted that stuff there. It's obviously off topic here.
overgard 5y ago
Apologies if this is a dumb question because I don't understand these techs very well. It strikes me that a fundamental problem of bitcoin is that it's a deflationary currency, so there's no sense in spending coins if you can just hold them (other than to exit the volatility of the market), because the coin will likely be way more valuable if you just keep it. Whereas with traditional currency, you have an incentive to spend it, because a dollar today is worth more than it would be a year from now. Am I missing something there? So it seems like as an actual replacement currency it can't work because buying things with it is a bad idea. Is solana different in this regard? It seems with other coins the value is in sending and receiving money based on real currency? Except that transaction happens somewhat publicly if you're not funneling different amounts through different wallets? I'm not trying to be glib, but I feel stumped on what I'd use cryptocurrency for other than a long hold investment or to buy something illegal. I know that's a common complaint, what I'm hoping for is someone to tell me where I am mistaken?
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  Bitcoin is like gold, so in many ways I agree with you. I don’t think spending BTC is wise, for the exact reasons you’ve pointed out. I say this as someone who has been into crypto since 2013. I have Bitcoin, and I will likely never sell it. This has nothing to do with Solana or other similar technologies like Ethereum though. It’s like comparing gold to the internet. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s like apples and farari’s. Staking SOL or ETH can yield money because you’re validating transactions, similar to mining, but without the high energy costs. These technologies are platforms. So why buy SOL? Well, so you can stake, but also because it’s volatile like many crypto assets. You can make money trading it. However, this is a different side to the market than the tech. The people actually building software on top of Solana that ideally helps drive the price of the token in the market. It’s not intended to be money. Most crypto currency’s aren’t.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > I have Bitcoin, and I will likely never sell it Curious, why did you buy it if you will never sell it?
ChainOfFools 5y ago
> A Solana cluster is a set of independently owned computers working together (and sometimes against each other) quite the assertion. how does the network guarantee its "cluster" nodes are "independently owned?" the unsubstantiated assumption that the network will not centralize around one or two obfuscated influence cartels (assuming this isn't already the case from day 1) is _the_ fundamental genetic flaw in every blockchain premise.

151 points by nikita 5y ago

This is how the scam begins, the downfall of Solana. It is yet another pump and dump just like all of these coins. Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. We seen them all before, ransomware becoming rampant, massive waste of electricity and resources and now the pandora's box can't be closed quicker enough.

prox 5y ago
Can’t agree more. The tech is interesting, but it is the same greed behind it which is old as mankind. It solves absolutely nothing, does nothing of value and adds none. Crypto is quickly becoming a failure of immense proportions. The externalities of cryptocurrencies include: Massive carbon emissions. Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran. Tax evasion. Laundering the proceeds of crime, including the drug trade, theft and fraud, and armed robbery. An epidemic of ransomware. A wave of securities fraud targeting the greedy and vulnerable. Shortages of products including graphics cards, hard disks, and chips in general as limited fab capacity is diverted to mining ASICS. Abuse of free tiers of Web services. Noise pollution.
- baby 5y ago
  Obviously many people disagree. Just to pick on one issue, carbon emission is negligible (unless you talk about bitcoin). Many people also rely on transfers of cryptocurrency. Just not you or your entourage.
  - nikanj 5y ago
    Obviously people who have money to launder don’t like the idea of stopping money laundering. The same for people doing drug trade, avoiding international sanctions, tax evasion, etc.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - mjfern 5y ago
    Yes, the people who disagree are those pumping and dumping and the bag holders. And cryptocurrency mining consumes as much electricity annually as the country of Argentina. Country scale emissions is not at all negligible, particularly in light of catastrophic global warming.
    - baby 5y ago
      That’s your opinion. And I guess that’s all you have when you can’t talk about the tech.
      - kgraves 5y ago
        In reality, nobody actually cares about the tech, Not even the VCs care, they're just buying into a project for an exit. The general public are even more oblivious to the tech, all they want. to know is 'How do I 100x my money? When is coin X going to the moon?'. They all want the 'moon' more than the tech.
        baby 5y ago
        I care. I thought HN would as well.
        kgraves 5y ago
        You are in the .00001% minority that cares about the tech and everyone else is making millions on the backs of cryptocurrencies.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      Notice what you did here is the same subtle disinformation tactic that every major news story about crypto mining employs. 1. Compare crypto energy usage to something huge (small country, big tech companies, etc). 2. Don't put that into context of whole of human civilization. It's <1% of global electricity consumption. 3. Don't clarify that this is comparing to electricity consumption, excluding other major energy uses like transportation, heating, and shipping which are generally non electric and necessarily carbon emitting. 4. Imply that cryptocurrency electricity usage is creating tons of carbon emissions, even though it consumes electricity and only seeks the cheapest source. When it comes to carbon emissions and the resulting climate catastrophe, we could shut down every cryptocurrency tomorrow and we'd still be fucked. Attacking cryptocurrency for it's energy use is a horrible waste of political and social capital that could be put toward actually solving the problem rather than engaging in moral masturbation.
- miohtama 5y ago
  Please read the article and study the underlying technology. Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts. Solana uses proof of stake and does not have the energy consumption issue, or does not use graphics card. It is cost and energy efficient alternative for Bitcoin and other proof of work public blockchains. More about the history of proof of stake here: https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/ https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/
  - dvt 5y ago
    > Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts. You expertly avoid all arguments except that Solana uses proof of stake. Who cares. Prox's point still stands: folks will continue to use blockchain-powered "pseudo-currencies" for illegal drugs, murder-for-hire, money laundering, ransomware, and speculation. No one's buying groceries with BTC.
    - haswell 5y ago
      Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash. This thread is not about BTC…
      - crummy 5y ago
        Isn't that why we don't have $10,000 notes? Or even $500? To make illegal activity more difficult?
      - dvt 5y ago
        > Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash. You can't be serious. Ad hoc cash transfers are regulated (can't bring more than $10k across borders without declaring, for example), supply is limited, and bills have literal serial numbers on them.
        haswell 5y ago
        Crypto is a relatively new technology. Illegal money is as old as civilization. Yes, there are regulations to make it harder to carry out elicit business, but that doesn’t change history, nor does it invalidate the point I was trying to make.
- vmception 5y ago
  is this copypasta for every crypto thread?
- schrijver 5y ago
  > Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran Not a big fan of crypto, but this is one of the less convincing arguments against it—as the current situation where the US more or less gets to decide who are the rogue states, because of the global financial system’s dependency on the US dollar, doesn’t seem all that great. For example, the US have ruled: “Saudi Arabia good, Iran bad” for a long time now. Since the signing of the nuclear treaty with Iran, the EU had been trying to normalise trade relations, but this has proven exceedingly complicated since the US pulled out, since most financial transactions at some point pass through a US based financial institution that are beholden to sanctions towards Iran. I don’t think crypto is the ideal answer for this problem, I would prefer a financial system that can deal with multiple fiat currencies and has less reliance on the USD, but that won’t happen overnight. cf https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-finance-idUSKBN29O1ZI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-finance-idUSKBN29O1ZI
haswell 5y ago
The problem with this comment is that it ignores advances in crypto meant to address the primary downsides. I’m 100% in agreement that some aspects of some crypto currencies are extremely problematic and should/must be stopped. But generalizing all crypto the way this comment does is not helpful or constructive. Recognize the nuance, and be specific about the issues.
- kgraves 5y ago
  Well, what are the upsides? I can't think of any that our existing system can already do.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
atlgator 5y ago
Not surprised Mark Andreesen and Ben Horowitz are at the center of it. They were on Clubhouse shilling NFTs all pandemic.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  this is ridiculous. If either Horowitz or Andreessen are into something there is usually a pretty good chance that the thing is going to be big. pay attention.
  - kgraves 5y ago
    So Clubhouse has gone pretty well has it? Considering that Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Spotify and even Facebook is getting in on Clubhouse's format. Also, every time a VC comes along and does this with cryptocurrencies, there is almost a guaranteed complete dump in the price coin, only hurting the general public.
coolestguy 5y ago
Spoken like someone talking about immigration who knows only what they've seen on Fox News. You're so unbelievably short sighted about a tech innovation. There's more to crypto than bitcoin & greed is an unsolvable issue in humanity, not a crypto bug,
- baby 5y ago
  I agree with this comment. The FUD on HN about crypto and fraud is disappointing to say the least. Impossible to have a good technical discussion around cryptocurrencies because of that. I’m going to start flagging these.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    it’s not impossible. just harder. also, remember that hn has a bit of an echo chamber effect. I’ve been downvoted over time for expressing unpopular opinions that turn out to be mostly true. i don’t care. i’m here with an open minded and will listen to the other side arguments. X is dangerous and must be stopped is not an argument. You need to articulate why it’s dangerous and exactly what you mean when you say that and when you say it must be stopped. also, crypto is not going anywhere. If you cannot see that maybe you should start looking into it a bit deeper
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Daishiman 5y ago
    In sorry but I don't really see any crypto advocates talking about the tech at all. It's always at some undetermined point in the future, always products that solve problems created by crypto, and never anything consumer based or meant to actually reduce friction to make it a usable product for banking. Crypto advocates' ideas of problems in the financial system have no mapping to the issues that people working in real fintech and its consumers identify.
    - baby 5y ago
      It’s out there. Up to you to read the stuff and ask questions.
dang 5y ago
Ok, but this response has such a reflexive, repetitive, generic-indignant response to every remotely related topic that it is now 100% predictable, and that makes it off-topic for HN. We only want intellectually curious conversation here, and curiosity and predictability are antithetical. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I absolutely don't mean to pick on you personally—it's a systemic problem. Also, threads are a co-creation of comments and upvotes, and reflexive upvotes are by far the bigger problem. If you or anyone wants further explanation about what we are/aren't hoping for in HN threads, the following principles and the associated links should help: Curiosity withers under repetition: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... Generic discussion is not interesting, at least not on internet forums: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... We want reflective rather than reflexive conversation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Diffs are what make an HN conversation interesting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- jachee 5y ago
  What good does suppression of opposition do?
  - dang 5y ago
    It's not about suppressing opposition, it's about comment quality. I'm sure there are many interesting ways to express opposition. Predictable/generic comments are internet noise. Reducing noise is good for signal/noise ratio.
- cotelletta 5y ago
  Which of these principles demands you let a cabal of intersectionalists flag their enemies off the front page? Just curious where the intellectual curiosity and lack of reflexiveness comes in. I ask because if there's one thing I've noticed, it's that these people are unable to tell the difference between low quality arguments and low status arguments. Consistently.
mssundaram 5y ago
> Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. I don't think that they're perfect, or that they're good for everything, but your statement is hyperbolic.
- kgraves 5y ago
  Well there isn't, and I mean it. They do way more harm than good. There isn't anything wrong with using existing secure and regulated methods (Paypal, Bank Transfer, etc), Cryptocurrencies claim to be decentralised when underneath they ARE still centralised and manipulated, especially Bitcoin. I will only admit it has been a good run, but now it is time to for the regulators to step in.
  - noidesto 5y ago
    What about the unbanked? People in high-interest countries? Cross-border payments? You present a strong claim that they "ARE still centralized and manipulated, especially Bitcoin". Please present concrete evidence.
    - kgraves 5y ago
      You have Transferwise and Western Union for this, the latter being there for over 100 years and still in use. Before you argue about WU fees, Bitcoin's fees are no better than Western Union's, hence Transferwise. > You present a strong claim that they "ARE still centralized and manipulated, especially Bitcoin". Please present concrete evidence. Princeton University concluded in a study that the bitcoin network is 50% controlled by 5 of the 6 bitcoin mining companies [0] [1] so how is Bitcoin decentralised If it is becoming more centralised by mining organisations and if most of the hashing power is centralised in China? That seems to be that means that Bitcoin isn't really decentralised then no? [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/bitcoin-s-network-operations-are-controlled-by-five-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/bitcoin-s... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf
      - 5y ago
strangescript 5y ago
People have been saying this about crypto for 10 years and bitcoin 30x'ed despite all the negativity, with tons of big institutions loading up on it behind the scenes. It's here to stay. When you buy something at the store, the cashier doesn't question you how you got the money. They don't care. All they know is the currency is the proof that you did something, or sold something that other people valued. Valuing a unique crypto hash is no more ridiculous than someone valuing a painting, old baseball cards, ancient pottery and all the other random stuff people collect and trade that are nothing more than a decoration. Well, except crypto completely mobile, easy to exchange and can't be taken from you like all other the assets we have been exchanging since the beginning of time.
- kgraves 5y ago
  > People have been saying this about crypto for 10 years and bitcoin 30x'ed despite all the negativity, with tons of big institutions loading up on it behind the scenes. It's here to stay. The main goal of bitcoin is to be a decentralised peer to peer cryptocurrency, it has completely failed in its original purpose to become that in 10 years. And when more people realise how inefficient it is in terms of energy, transactions, fees and utility, the quicker the price will go down.
  - qualudeheart 5y ago
    Monero fulfills the original promise of bitcoin.
    - kgraves 5y ago
      Right, so Bitcoin failed in its original purpose then no?
      - baby 5y ago
        Why are we talking about bitcoin when there are 100 more advanced cryptocurrencies?
elevenoh 5y ago
>Cryptocurrencies must be stopped, there is absolutely NO benefit to having them. Do you truly believe this? Or is it tongue in cheek? Crypto ain't going away. And nothing will stop it. It'll encroach on all industries long term. It's global open competitive darwinism playing out before our eyes. No domain on earth is as open & competitive as crypto.
- kgraves 5y ago
  > Do you truly believe this? YES.

ubavic 5y ago

I don’t even know what this article is about, but I noticed digits of the π.

darkotic 5y ago

they got the whole pi

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
egman_ekki 5y ago
let's just hope they won't end up in a pi hole...

bobthepanda 5y ago

What's the practical difference between this and issuing shares? Like, can you just issue coins at a 1:1 ratio to shares to skirt securities regulations? It smells fishy.

_rpd 5y ago
> The token sale, which was completed earlier this year, was only made available to off-shore investors There does seem to be some regulatory testing going on here.
- JaggerFoo 5y ago
  The lead VC and others are US based, or have operations in the US. Were they able to segment investments, so that only non-US investor money flowed into the sale? Does having US-based VC organizations participate create a nexus for the SEC to have authority? It will be interesting to follow the legalities of this, so perhaps others can model the sale and use to successfully float new tokens without scrutiny by the SEC. Or does the "Duck Rule" not apply to this sale? What say you Gary Gensler?
  - vmception 5y ago
    Master funds are typically not US organizations, and they are also accredited investors. There is no need to segment non-US money. Organizations typically do investor quality tests compliant with US exemptions even if they exclude US investors and also file Regulation D exemption notices. Here is a quick google search for "Solana Reg D" showing the one from 2018 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1735643/000173564318000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1735643/000173564318... > It will be interesting to follow the legalities of this, so perhaps others can model the sale and use to successfully float new tokens without scrutiny by the SEC. This has never been an issue. The only issue the SEC has ever had was with token transactions that did not file any regulatory exemption and sold to unaccredited investors. Many people want clarity about the ability to still do that. Finally, the SEC regulates transactions not assets. The irony is that some transactions create perpetual securities where all transactions of that type of asset is always a securities transaction to the point where the distinction is not useful. But this is important to understand when you are trying to do a securities transaction for something that is not intended to be a security and how the SEC will react. Being deemed a perpetual security is untenable for crypto assets because there had not been liquid places to trade crypto securities and every centralized user needs to be a registered broker dealer (lol). A transaction itself can be a securities transaction while the ensuing asset is not. The SEC has never had an issue with that reality and hasn't penalized anyone for this kind of conversion.

dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago

Interesting. This seems to complement the recent $100M Arrington XRP investment into Algorand https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/arrington-algo-growth-fund-100million https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/arrington-algo-growt... You know the game's getting serious when the sharky VC's smell their new blood money in the water and start tossing around 9 figure stacks.

Aeolun 5y ago

This sounds exactly like Ethereum. What makes this so unique. Also: > biggest crypto hackathon 100, instead of 50 participants I’m sure.

lopatin 5y ago
Being able to do 50,000 tx per second with fees at fractions of a penny is what differentiates this from Ethereum. This makes things such as truly real time, decentralized exchanges feasible.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Does that 50k tps come at the cost of any type of centralization? I don't know much about Solana, but that usually seems to be the trade off with other crypto that has advertised comparable speeds.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    It does make it centralized, just take a look at the spec requirements to see how unrealistic it is to expect high participation (let alone technical knowledge) https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs
    - EMM_386 5y ago
      Hardware is always improving and costs drop ... isn't it only a matter of time until these requirements are nothing?
      - kevingadd 5y ago
        Do you expect the requirements to run a node to stay flat even as network usage increases and the history grows longer?

baby 5y ago

Congrats to Solana. Does someone understand how their consensus protocol works? I heard it’s quite efficient.

ralph84 5y ago

> select individual investors like Boys Noize If this isn't a sign of a bubble I don't know what is.

arcticbull 5y ago
It's worth pointing out that Alyssa Milano and MC Hammer were early investors in Square haha. But then again, I mean, it's a crypto business now so.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  MC Hammer, on crypto: Can’t touch this!
vmception 5y ago
you should read about some SPAC deals then
nl 5y ago
From April 2011: "Is Ashton Kutcher's recent investment in Blekko an indicator of a technology bubble in Silicon Valley?"[1] Turns out that no - 2011 wasn't a bubble in technology in Silicon Valley. For example Amazon stock price was around $200, and is now over $3000. Blekko was later acquired by IBM. [1] https://www.quora.com/Is-Ashton-Kutchers-recent-investment-in-Blekko-an-indicator-of-a-technology-bubble-in-Silicon-Valley https://www.quora.com/Is-Ashton-Kutchers-recent-investment-i...

furyofantares 5y ago

I wonder if they negotiated up from some boring number of hundreds of millions of dollars to arrive at pi-hundred-million, or did they negotiate down to it? And was anyone advocating for 420M?

dang 5y ago

All: please don't post shallow, reflexive reactions to a story like this, even if you're sure you're right. Such reactions are 100% predictable (e.g. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174), and predictability hurts more than rightness helps [0]. Predictable discussions are tedious and invariably lead to worse—for example, tedious discussions turn nasty because that's the only thing the mind has left to amuse itself with [1]. What we want: reflective [2], specific, difference-based [3] responses, coming from slower cognitive processes like absorbing new information and thinking about it. That's what produces a discussion which hasn't been had before, and those are the curious discussions. They may be less exciting in the sensational-indignant way, but that sort of excitement is not the curiosity which HN exists for [4], and we all know it gets boring after a while. Scorched earth is not interesting [5]. p.s. I know nothing and have no opinion about the topic of the story; I just know HN threads and can spot a brewing disaster when I see one. The last 700 (let's say) cryptocurrency-related threads have all been the same flamewar. That's enough of those; we're ready to move to the next exercise now. Edit: well done everyone! Much better. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [5] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

dang 5y ago
This is a stub for replies, so as not to take the thread further off topic.

mgh2 5y ago

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492616

rowaweigh 5y ago

Can someone explain what is proof of history? I tried to read the white paper but don't understand what PoH is supposed to achieve or how it interacts with proof of stake.

SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
I tried to read the whitepaper too. It's either total nonsense or I'm just not getting it. "Proof of History" appears to mean that trusted verifiers maintain the network.
- Zamicol 5y ago
  It's a subset of PoS. It's totally marketing. "Our PoS is so novel it deserves it's own name."
a1371 5y ago
PoH is essentially just PoW: more blocks mean more time has spent. I don't know why they just named it something different. Since SOL is not really decentralized, the validators can communicate a lot faster. So that's the difference with a usual blockchain where the latency is higher.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  It appears quite different than PoW, which is how it is able to boast so much higher throughput. https://tokens-economy.gitbook.io/consensus/chain-based-proof-of-capacity-space/proof-of-history https://tokens-economy.gitbook.io/consensus/chain-based-proo... https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-explained-by-a-water-clock-e682183417b8 https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-explained-by... I agree it doesn’t seem very decentralized at the moment (not many validators and most support coming from the foundation) but that may change if the platform is able to scale.
  - keymone 5y ago
    PoW has nothing to do with throughput.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mattdesl 5y ago

It’s good to see more research and development funds being invested in alternative consensus mechanisms beyond PoW/PoS. Solana looks interesting given it’s high transaction throughput and novel PoH algorithm - assuming it can scale in a decentralized way beyond the support of its foundation. Though, unfortunately it still seems quite challenging to run a Solana validator (which ultimately defines the health & decentralization of the chain). The current specs and docs are pretty daunting last I checked; hopefully that can be improved in time. Edit: I found this article to be a good introduction to the idea of PoH. It appears Solana is a mix of PoH (the novel high throughput validation mechanism) and PoS (used to incentivize validation and penalize negative behaviour). https://lsmod.medium.com/what-makes-solana-the-fastest-public-blockchain-cb8ffde1a7f4 https://lsmod.medium.com/what-makes-solana-the-fastest-publi...

Vespasian 5y ago
I'm quite interested in this topic. Does PoH encourages the "excessive" use of hardware and energy like PoW or PoTaS (chia) does? I'd be very interested in any solution which scales its resource usage with usability/throughput rather than token price. (I'm probably missing the correct terms)
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  Yes, it is PoW, plus brilliant marketing.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  I haven’t looked too deeply at it yet - but I don’t think it would lead to more excessive energy costs than PoW. It’s using PoS in addition to their PoH validation algorithm; and you have to “stake” or lock some amount of tokens up in order to validate and earn rewards. So you wouldn’t simply be able to spin up hundreds of validators (GPUs) because you’d quickly have no funds left to stake.
- dlubarov 5y ago
  I wouldn't expect PoH to lead to much energy use, since nodes are evaluating a single hash chain. Since the computation can't be parallelized, computational throughput isn't a factor; only latency is.

Animats 5y ago

Solana has an interesting technology. It's sort of a modernized Ethereum. High transaction rate, low transaction cost, more scalable, and proof of stake. Features Ethereum was supposed to have by now, but still doesn't. Programs can be stored on the blockchain. They're written in, of all things, Berkeley Packet Filter bytecode. (No, they don't run inside the Linux kernel. I hope.) Programs can be written in Rust and compiled. How secure this will turn out to be for their "smart contracts" is an open question at this time. So far, I can't find any working applications for Solana that do something outside the crypto space. Like, say, replacing domain registrars. There's some kind of identity service, but it seems to be tied to Twitter. There's The Media Network, but it doesn't work yet. ("The Media Network is an open source, decentralized and censorship-resistant live streaming hosting protocol. More coming soon.") Not seeing "AirBnB for Solana", or "Uber for Solana", or "offshore realty for Solana", or even "concert ticket scalping for Solana". This is a problem. It doesn't really do anything yet.

JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
>Etherium You mean ethereum right?
kaspern 5y ago
Audius is one such example: https://medium.com/audius/audius-selects-solana-to-scale-community-owned-music-streaming-8a868db644eb https://medium.com/audius/audius-selects-solana-to-scale-com...
- Animats 5y ago
  That deal was announced last October, but does not seem to be working yet. Or even in test. Searching the Audius API docs returns zero references to Solana.
Clewza313 5y ago
Why would you even need Airbnb or Uber for Solana? What problem does either solve? This remains a fundamental problem with crypto: we're 13 years in and the only practical use cases remain speculation and money laundering. Even DeFi seems to consistent mostly of navel gazing (crypto derivatives etc) and leverage.

metastart 5y ago

Solana with its proof of history and performance sounds extremely cool. The performance relative to network size also looks really good. The general idea strikes me as a great insight, though I have just an intuitive grasp of the idea (I haven't looked into the white paper). Proof of history seems to be based around proof of time -- a fundamental problem in physics (inspired Einstein) is defining time and that usually is via synchrony. It seems here that's defined by assigning a function which takes a certain amount of time and something that can't be pre-computed. I'm not sure how the parameters to compute are determined every second or fraction of a second -- but it sounds like a modified proof of work where the computing and energy burn may not scale as the value or size of the network does (unlike bitcoin to date). Building a network fundamentally around timestamps also makes sense for a ledger. The price of Solana and every other cryptocurrency has gone wayyyyy up this year...no comment about any of that except that for almost all crypto (maybe excepting Bitcoin), it is driven by speculation with limited usage in legal markets and dominant usage in illegal markets. If crypto disappeared from the world today, the only thing that would change is cybercrime would reduce by at least half...maybe more hehe. That doesn't detract, though, from what look like quite innovative technical achievements by Solana!

mech422 5y ago
>>If crypto disappeared from the world today, the only thing that would change is cybercrime would reduce by at least half...maybe more hehe Yeah - cuz no one hacked banks, cut fraudulent POs, or any of the other scams before crypto. It used to be said banks wouldn't report or prosecute hacks for fear losing public trust, so how common it was is speculation. That was a cheap shot for an otherwise interesting post :-P P.S. My favorite 'bank hack' was the coder that changed a banks interest calculations to deposit all the factions of pennies of calculated interest to accounts he controlled. Because it was less then a penny, the bank couldn't account for it and he had something like $4 million before he was caught. After that, we had to start using accumulator buckets for calcing the interest.. edit: s/would/wouldn't/
- neRok 5y ago
  > Yeah - cuz no one hacked banks, cut fraudulent POs, or any of the other scams before crypto. OP was probably referring to attacks such as ransomware, because if you don't have an anonymous way to receive payment, then there is less incentive to do the crime in the first place.

applepple 5y ago

Interesting. It reminds me of Capitalisk https://capitalisk.com/ https://capitalisk.com/ except without quantum resistance and harder to setup.

a1371 5y ago

Grab a beverage HN! This one might get a bit long: There is a saying that "Engineering is finding the best compromises". You know about the Crypto Trilemma: Secure (S), Fast (F), Decentralized (D). Think of it as you have 15 eggs (I show them with 0) and 3 baskets. For Bitcoin/ETH, it may look something like this: S: 00000 F: 00000 D: 00000 When we say Fast, think of it as "fast for the transaction fee you spend". So a cheaper network is somewhat considered a faster one too. Bitcoin Cash was not happy with the speed of BTC, so they went with: S: 00000 F: 0000000 D: 000 But not all these 3 are "perceived" equally. Usually people only see speed, so for a new blockchain to "look" impressive, it can do something like: S: 0 F: 0000000000000 D: 0 EOS and XRP are examples of this approach. Basically, AWS with extra steps (not very decentralized). For EOS, everyone votes for iirc 12 nodes to do all the transaction processing until the next election. Let's look at Solana's claim on "Proof Of History". Wondering why other networks did not do an update if it's a great idea. Looking at their dev docs, they introduce this concept of "Cluster", initiated by "Leaders" where "Validators" join them and and "Clients" send transactions to. > [clusters] simply ignore the existence of the other. Transactions sent to the wrong one are quietly rejected. So they are breaking down the blockchain into small Validator groups. You have to know which Cluster you want to contact. That's... a compromise. It's not even comparable with ETH or the internet where you have this massive pool of validators that all participate over the same network. But ok, let's go with the compromise. Then the issues start to emerge. When there are clusters, what happens to the network hash rate? is it divided up? then someone can easily come in and 51% the clusters one by one? Well, they have to work around that. Let's see. > Additional validators then register with any registered member of the cluster. Ok, so, if I have a cluster where I know all the Validators, I can collude with them to just ignore any new Validators from coming in? > A validator receives all entries from the leader and submits votes confirming those entries are valid... Clients send transactions to any validator's Transaction Processing Unit (TPU) port. If the node is in the validator role, it forwards the transaction to the designated leader. If I'm the leader, can I censor a transaction coming from a Validator? Or perhaps I see a transaction that will move the market, can I sneak in a transaction in my own benefit before broadcasting that one to my validators? This just kind of a bank. On a more humane note, I listened to Solana's podcast and I am annoyed that they were dunking on ETH and acted so egotistically "we are new like electric car... people say we are so smart". The blockchain speed/scale limitations are just hard to solve the right way, it's disingenuous to discredit truly brilliant people for your own tech. So maybe I'm dismissive of something that's lying underneath. For what it's worth, Vitalik recently has talked about many of these limitations. Still, good on Solana for providing legible documentation.

awaythrowact 5y ago

Questions for Solana bulls from a crypto noob: 1) ETH bulls say that Solana is not really decentralized. It achieves scalability by limiting the network to only a handful of validators; why not just use AWS at that point? Why are they wrong? 2) ETH bulls say that security of a proof-of-stake is driven by total coin market cap; the more cap, the more expensive an attack. This makes ETH more secure than Solana. ETH has an unbreakable first mover advantage for this reason, they say. 3) ETH bulls say that ETH plus Polygon (or similar level two solution) is just as scalable as solana, while retaining the above two advantages of ETH. Why is that wrong?

baby 5y ago
PoS security driven by market cap is like saying that the richer the top 1% is and the more they’ll be incentivized to protect their funds. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it throws out a lot of other factors out the window. For example, who is this top 1% and how much do they care about the crypto.
- albntomat0 5y ago
  Honest question: How is that different from proof of work, where those with significant resources (1%, a nation, etc) can spend significantly on mining equipment?
  - awaythrowact 5y ago
    My understanding is, proof of stake is not more secure than proof of work. Reason for PoS are efficiency, speed of transaction, lower gas fees, less environmental impact, etc. (Of course there can be secure PoS, insecure PoS, secure PoW, insecure PoW…)
    - yokem55 5y ago
      Polygon basically checkpoints a spreadsheet onto the eth chain on an interval, but there is no way to guarantee that there weren't any shenanigans between the checkpoints. This is a big improvement over say BSC which does no such thing, but it isn't the security of a true eth L2. Real L2's can prove that their output to L1 is legitimate either through zero knowledge cryptographic proofs (loopring, zksync) or through a game theory fraud check (optimism, arbitrum).

comodore_ 5y ago

The hardware requirements wrt memory to run a validator node are just insane https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs

lucasyvas 5y ago
Holy, you weren't kidding. I had to read it three times to make sure my brain got it right.
hanniabu 5y ago
Exactly why it'll never be decentralized (centralized team and private investments aside)
jtsiskin 5y ago
~$11,000 a year on GCP according to https://gcpinstances.info/?cost_duration=annually https://gcpinstances.info/?cost_duration=annually, for just the instance, if you commit up front to a full year. Then add on storage and ingress/egress traffic. And this is without the GPU requirement yet.
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  Or like 1/10 of that at Hetzner
asdf3331 5y ago
Remember when people claimed that the bitcoin block size couldn't be increased because we would sacrifice decentralization? Well look where we are now...
wmf 5y ago
It would be interesting to calculate $/TPS instead of using sticker shock as a metric.
fuzzybear3965 5y ago
Yeah, it's true. The claim/theory/working hypothesis is that technological scaling will reduce the cost of a node over subsequent decades so that running a node becomes more affordable, increasing the decentralization of the network.

rank0 5y ago

I will always fundamentally distrust blockchain protocols where a “private token sale” or something similar is possible. If we are truly trying to create a new decentralized financial system, why are we letting corporate entities build and control the protocols? Even if it does work, well just end up coming full circle and in 100 years there will be a new movement to dethrone the ethereum/solana/algorand elites all over again. What does it matter if solana labs validators run the financial system rather than JP Morgan? Neither are democratic or exist to serve the public. At least with Bitcoin or other PoW systems anyone can participate in the network...

kgraves 5y ago
This. And to think that I was the crazy one for calling “private token sales” for what it is, a scam. Only to be suppressed further down in the thread. We shouldn't be celebrating this. EDIT: dang is here, picking on me and flagging this comment as I gave a substantiated Princeton study of my claims in my comment [0], I'm making my point and he is picking on me for some reason. I linked to studies and articles about my points for readers to look into further. How is that 'unsubstantive'? There are more unsubstantive comments in this thread that have no evidence and are outright baseless, but obviously dang won't go after those. > I absolutely don't mean to pick on you personally... you are, please do not patronise me on this. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497742
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You're not being "suppressed", just asked not to lower the quality of the thread with generic, shallow, predictable dismissals. We don't care what your position is, we care about the quality of these threads, and especially about not having the same wretched, copy/pasted flamewar over and over. It's entirely possible to make substantial arguments in favor of the same position, as rank0 just demonstrated—and that's totally fine.
- dang 5y ago
  It's not my intention to pick on you and I'm sorry it feels that way. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. It's definitely not personal—moderation is extremely repetitive and you're far from the only person that I've replied like that to. From my perspective the principles are pretty much the same everywhere and it's just the job. I certainly understand that it feels different on the other side because the interaction is so asymmetrical. Since your edit is replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27497174 and even quoting from it, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have posted that stuff there. It's obviously off topic here.

overgard 5y ago

Apologies if this is a dumb question because I don't understand these techs very well. It strikes me that a fundamental problem of bitcoin is that it's a deflationary currency, so there's no sense in spending coins if you can just hold them (other than to exit the volatility of the market), because the coin will likely be way more valuable if you just keep it. Whereas with traditional currency, you have an incentive to spend it, because a dollar today is worth more than it would be a year from now. Am I missing something there? So it seems like as an actual replacement currency it can't work because buying things with it is a bad idea. Is solana different in this regard? It seems with other coins the value is in sending and receiving money based on real currency? Except that transaction happens somewhat publicly if you're not funneling different amounts through different wallets? I'm not trying to be glib, but I feel stumped on what I'd use cryptocurrency for other than a long hold investment or to buy something illegal. I know that's a common complaint, what I'm hoping for is someone to tell me where I am mistaken?

ryanSrich 5y ago
Bitcoin is like gold, so in many ways I agree with you. I don’t think spending BTC is wise, for the exact reasons you’ve pointed out. I say this as someone who has been into crypto since 2013. I have Bitcoin, and I will likely never sell it. This has nothing to do with Solana or other similar technologies like Ethereum though. It’s like comparing gold to the internet. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s like apples and farari’s. Staking SOL or ETH can yield money because you’re validating transactions, similar to mining, but without the high energy costs. These technologies are platforms. So why buy SOL? Well, so you can stake, but also because it’s volatile like many crypto assets. You can make money trading it. However, this is a different side to the market than the tech. The people actually building software on top of Solana that ideally helps drive the price of the token in the market. It’s not intended to be money. Most crypto currency’s aren’t.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > I have Bitcoin, and I will likely never sell it Curious, why did you buy it if you will never sell it?

ChainOfFools 5y ago

> A Solana cluster is a set of independently owned computers working together (and sometimes against each other) quite the assertion. how does the network guarantee its "cluster" nodes are "independently owned?" the unsubstantiated assumption that the network will not centralize around one or two obfuscated influence cartels (assuming this isn't already the case from day 1) is _the_ fundamental genetic flaw in every blockchain premise.