The Solana Field Guide

01

The birthday

Day the coin was born

16 March 2020 (Mainnet Beta)

Solana’s public Mainnet Beta is dated 16 March 2020 in the Foundation’s own newsletters. The white paper is a different layer, and Solana’s “November 2017” line is not an attested publication date.

Anatoly Yakovenko is the design author (anatoly@solana.io on the whitepaper). The paper was originally titled Loom. The rename to Solana came later.

Mainnet Beta in March 2020 is the live public network beginners mean when they say “Solana launched.” Beta in the name was honest: the chain was live and still under heavy engineering.

The whitepaper abstract’s “710k transactions per second” is a 2018 analysis “on a 1 gbps network” — a model, not a measurement of the running network. This book will not print 710,000 TPS as a description of mainnet.

02

People and projects

Who is behind it

Split the cluster, Solana Labs, the Solana Foundation, and SOL. Labs is a for-profit studio. The Foundation is a nonprofit; as of 8 April 2020 it owned protocol IP previously held by Labs, plus 167 million SOL.

Anatoly Yakovenko is co-founder and CEO of Labs in Labs’ own releases. Labs incorporation day is unverified in this pass.

An application team on Solana is not “Solana the network.” A failed NFT mint is not a base-layer refund desk.

03

Place and lineage

Where it came from

The design started as a Proof of History clock for a high-performance chain, first committed under the title Loom.

Proof of History is a clock. The whitepaper says it is used “alongside a consensus algorithm.” Tower BFT is the consensus. Do not write “Solana uses PoH consensus.”

Official postmortems document multi-hour halts that required a coordinated restart. This book uses only incidents with a solana.com postmortem and does not invent an outage count.

04

Keep these separate

What it is and is not

05

The machine

How it works

Agreement method

Proof of stake plus Proof of History as an ordering clock. A scheduled leader proposes entries; others replay and vote.

Units

SOL, plus lamports as the small unit. Tokens have separate mint addresses.

Issuance

SOL has inflation and fee mechanics rather than a Bitcoin-style hard cap. This book does not print a live supply figure. Read current protocol parameters if you need today’s number.

A transaction can contain several instructions. One approval may do more than one thing.

A failed transaction can still cost SOL because the network evaluated it.

Priority fees exist when the network is busy. Cheap is not free, and cheap is not safe.

A payment, in order

1. A wallet signs one or more instructions.
2. The transaction is sent to the network.
3. A leader includes it; validators replay the execution.
4. Votes help confirm the ledger.
5. You check the signature result—not only the app’s happy animation.

06

Keys, not cookbooks

How you send and hold it

The coins are recorded on the network. The wallet holds the secret that can move them. If someone else has that secret, they can usually move the coins.

A recovery phrase is a list of ordinary words that can rebuild the keys. Nobody who is helping you should need it. A support chat, a giveaway, or a “wallet check” that asks for it is trying to take the coins.

Custodial accounts (an exchange or app that holds the keys for you) can freeze, limit, or lose access. Self-custody gives you control and the full job of backup. Neither choice is magic.

This chapter is not a crime cookbook. It does not teach mixing, tumbling, fake identities, or how to hide funds from a lawful process. It teaches you not to donate your keys to a stranger.

On Solana, a token is identified by its mint address. Two coins can share a name. Native SOL has no SPL mint. So11111111111111111111111111111111111111112 is wrapped SOL (WSOL), not native SOL.

Hardware wallets still cannot save you from signing a malicious instruction.

Safer habits

• Download wallet software only from a site or store listing you found yourself, not from a message.
• Write the recovery phrase on paper or another offline backup. Do not photograph it, email it, or type it into a website.
• Send a tiny test first. Confirm the network, the asset, and the destination.
• For a company account, turn on a second factor that is not only a text message if you can.
• Stop if anyone asks for the phrase, a remote-control app, or a “verification deposit.”
• Read every instruction in the wallet, not only the website headline.
• Verify the mint address from an official site you typed yourself.

This book does not tell you how to hide funds, evade a law, or defeat an investigation. A wallet lesson is about not losing your own keys—not about becoming invisible.

07

Read this twice

What can go wrong

08

United States readers only

Law and tax notes

These notes are for United States readers only. Other countries have different rules.

The Internal Revenue Service treats convertible virtual currency as property for federal tax purposes. That is the starting point in IRS Notice 2014-21. Later IRS pages, including the virtual-currency frequently asked questions, expand on reporting. They do not turn this book into tax advice.

Selling crypto, trading one crypto for another, or using crypto to pay for goods or services can be a taxable event. Receiving crypto as wages, as a trade or business payment, or in some airdrop or hard-fork situations can also create income. See Notice 2014-21 and Revenue Ruling 2019-24 for the IRS’s own words on forks and airdrops.

Keep records: date, amount in U.S. dollars, what you received or spent, and which service or wallet you used. A lost key is not automatically a deductible story you can invent later.

A listing, an exchange product, or a court remark about someone else is not your tax result.

This is not legal or tax advice. Rules change. Read the linked primary pages and talk to a licensed professional about your own facts.

Words used in this book

GLOSSARY

Read these before the check-the-terms pages. A word is only useful if you can say it back in your own words.

SOL

Solana’s native asset for fees and staking.

Lamport

A tiny fraction of SOL.

Mint address

The identifier of a specific token. The name is not enough.

Program

Executable code on Solana.

Account

A data object. Not the same as a bank account.

Proof of History

A verifiable delay clock that helps order events.

Instruction

One action inside a transaction. A transaction can hold several.

RPC

A server your wallet asks for chain data. A bad RPC can lie or fail.

Check yourself

CHECK THE TERMS

Circle one answer. The answer key is on the next pages. Do not peek until you have tried.

1. When is Solana’s Mainnet Beta birthday in this book?

   1. March 16, 2019
   2. March 16, 2020
   3. March 16, 2021

2. Proof of History replaces staking.

   1. True
   2. False
   3. Only during outages

3. How do you identify a Solana token?

   1. The logo
   2. The mint address. Native SOL has no mint; So1111…11112 is wrapped SOL
   3. The first three letters

4. Can a failed transaction cost SOL?

   1. Never
   2. Yes
   3. Only if you used a bridge

5. Who should get your recovery phrase?

   1. A Discord admin
   2. Nobody
   3. The Foundation

6. One Solana transaction can contain…

   1. Only a single send
   2. Several instructions
   3. Only a stake

7. Cheap fees mean low risk.

   1. True
   2. False
   3. True on Fridays

8. This book prints a live SOL supply.

   1. Yes
   2. No
   3. In the glossary

Check our work

Sources

Primary pages first. In-repo research packs under docs/field-guides/ were used as source wells. Payhip product blurbs were not used as facts. If a pack left a gap UNVERIFIED, this book leaves it open.

1. Solana whitepaper (PDF built 24 Apr 2018; source starts 12 Dec 2017 as Loom)
2. Solana Foundation May 2020 newsletter (Mainnet Beta launched March 16, 2020)
3. Solana transactions
4. Solana fees
5. IRS Notice 2014-21