Solana explained for people who just nod when their cousin says 'SOL is the future'
It's fast, it's dirt cheap, it went down a few times, and it's where most memecoins live. Everything you need to sound smart at the next dawat.
There’s always one cousin.
Every family event, he corners someone near the biryani and goes: “Bhai, Solana. Trust me. SOL is the future.”
And everyone nods. Nobody knows what he’s talking about. Today that ends.
So what is Solana?
Solana is a blockchain. Think of it as a giant public notebook that thousands of computers around the world keep copies of. Nobody can secretly rub anything out.
SOL is its coin. You use it to pay the tiny fees for doing things on Solana, and people also buy it hoping the price goes up.
- Founded by: Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, in 2018
- Went live: March 2020
- Price: around $92 on 3 November 2026
- All-time high: about $294, in January 2025
Why do people love it?
1. It’s FAST
Solana was built to handle loads of transactions at the same time. Sending money on it takes seconds, not the “is it stuck?” waiting game you get on some other chains.
2. It’s CHEAP
Fees are usually a fraction of a cent. Compare that to Ethereum, where fees during busy times have cost more than a plate of nihari.
3. It’s where the action is
Memecoins, trading apps, tokenised stocks: a lot of it happens on Solana. When the official $TRUMP memecoin launched there in January 2025, so many people piled in that SOL hit its record high.
OK, now the bits your cousin skips
It’s gone down. More than once.
- September 2021: offline for about 17 hours
- May 2022: about four and a half hours
- October 2022: about six hours
Imagine your bank app going dark for 17 hours. Things have been much steadier lately, but it’s part of the history.
The FTX crash
FTX, the giant exchange that collapsed in November 2022, was a big Solana backer. When it went bust, SOL dropped 40% in one day. Ouch.
It swings. HARD.
From its high of about $294 to around $92 now is a drop of nearly 70%. If you’d gone all in at the top, you’d be sitting on less than a third of it.
So, is your cousin right?
Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody knows, and anyone who says they do is selling something.
What’s true: Solana is fast, cheap and busy, and a lot of crypto runs on it. It’s also had outages and huge price swings.
Love the tech, respect the risk. Never put in money you’d cry about.
Want to see what SOL would have to hit to buy you a Corolla? Try the Goal Quest calculator at the bottom of our homepage. SOL is already picked.
Sources: Wikipedia’s Solana entry (founding, launch, outages, FTX, all-time high); 3 Nov 2026 price from the Pickaxe market report. Prices move all the time, so check the live ticker. Not financial advice.
Not financial advice. We explain things; you make your own calls.