What is Solana? The blockchain behind SOL: no supply cap, 589 million tokens in circulation

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always conduct your own research.Solana settles payments in milliseconds and swapped out its voting mechanism on October 21, 2026. What the network is, what SOL is needed for, and what applies in Germany for buying, custody and tax.Solana is a public blockchain that runs programs, tokens and payments without a bank or a company sitting in between. SOL is the token of that network: you pay the fees with it, and the machines that write the blocks post it as security. Technically Solana belongs to the group of layer-1 blockchains, the networks that settle their transactions themselves rather than building on another network. The mainnet launched in March 2020. Since then the network has processed 563.3 billion transactions by its own count. On October 23, 2026 one SOL cost $103.72, or €92.40, which puts Solana at rank seven among all cryptocurrencies with a market capitalisation of just over $61 billion. The all-time high of $293.31 dates from January 19, 2025. What is Solana? A layer-1 blockchain that keeps its o...