Solana is a public blockchain platform. Its internal cryptocurrency is SOL. Solana achieves consensus using a proof-of-stake mechanism, as well as a "proof-of-history" mechanism which Solana's whitepaper claims improves efficiency. Solana ensures composability between ecosystem projects by maintaining a single global state as the network scales. Solana can purportedly handle 50,000 transactions per second, which is faster than the Ethereum blockchain, but still less than the 400,000 transactions seen during the spike.