Manage your SOL
with NOW Wallet
How it works
How to buy Solana with card
- Pick SOL as the currency you want to buy.
- Choose a fiat currency to buy SOL with.
- Enter your card details and the recipient's address if you are sending to a third-party wallet.
- Receive your SOL in approximately 5 mins!
How to exchange Solana
- Pick SOL as the currency you want to exchange.
- Choose the crypto asset you’d like to get for your SOL.
- Enter the recipient's address if you are exchanging to a third-party wallet.
- Receive your exchanged assets in approximately 5 mins!
What is Solana (SOL)
Solana is a web-scale blockchain platform created in 2017. It was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko, Eric Williams, and Greg Fitzgerald as a chain that will overcome throughput and scalability issues of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and similar projects.
The difference between Solana and other blockchains starts from the consensus method – when most chains use Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, Solana is built on Proof of History. Coupled with several innovations and improvements of Solana, like Gulf Stream forwarding protocol, Pipeline transaction processing unit, and Sealevel parallelizing engine, this consensus method allows Solana to provide enormous throughput of 50,000 transactions per second.
SOL is a native currency of the Solana blockchain. Its primary purpose is to be a fuel for on-chain programs and validation of their outputs. However, it can also be used as a value transfer unit or for staking to profit from hodling.
After Solana's series of good news, the SOL token raised about 26,12% in SOL/USD rate, which resulted in Solana's Top-10 position on CoinMarketCap in the middle of August 2021. There were three events probably having the most significant impact: Mango Markets' DEX 70-million crowdfunding campaign; Launch of the Wormhole – communication protocol between Solana and other DeFi (like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Terra); SOL-powered sale of Degenerate Ape Academy's NFTs on Solanart marketplace, approximately worth $6 million.