What is Solana?

Solana is a blockchain built for mass adoption. It's a high performance network that is utilized for a range of use cases, including finance, payments, and gaming. Solana operates as a single global state machine, and is open, interoperable, and decentralized.

Why Solana? #

Designed to scale, Solana is purpose built for blockchain applications to reach millions of users. Instead of worrying about optimizing for the blockchain layer, developers can focus on building their application to reach product market fit. Not only can it scale now for blockchain application needs, but the network continues to be optimized with user experience in mind.

Building the best user experience in an application is a top priority for developers. With blockchains, the user experience is often limited by the underlying technology, causing slow response times and high fees. Solana's low fees and 400ms confirmation times enable developers to build applications that are user friendly and accessible to everyone.

Solana Features #

Feature	Description
Onchain Program Development	The ability to develop and deploy programs onchain. Users can interact with these programs permissionlessly, removing the need for middleman servers to build applications.
400ms Slot Times	Every transaction sent by users on Solana is confirmed in a block. With a target slot time of 400ms for each block, interactions by users do not have to wait, providing the best in class user experience of any blockchain.
Low Fees	Fees on Solana are well known to be low. With a median fee of 0.00064 SOL per transaction, Solana enables building for users across the world regardless of background.
High Throughput	Scaling to thousands of transactions per second, Solana is built to scale with your application's user needs.

How to Use These Docs #

On the left you will find the docs sidebar. This lists the documentation in order from basic to more advanced information. If you are new to Solana, we recommend starting from the top and working your way down. However, you're welcome to read them in any order that you like.

Once you're ready to start building, checkout the Getting Started section and a guide to build your first Solana application.