32 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
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# Introduction
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This document defines the architecture of Solana, a blockchain built from the
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ground up for scale. The goal of the architecture is to demonstrate there
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exists a set of software algorithms that in combination, removes software as a
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performance bottleneck, allowing transaction throughput to scale proportionally
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with network bandwidth. The architecture goes on to satisfy all three desirable
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properties of a proper blockchain, that it not only be scalable, but that it is
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also secure and decentralized.
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With this architecture, we calculate a theoretical upper bound of 710 thousand
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transactions per second (tps) on a standard gigabit network and 28.4 million
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tps on 40 gigabit. In practice, our focus has been on gigabit. We soak-tested
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a 150 node permissioned testnet and it is able to maintain a mean transaction
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throughput of approximately 200 thousand tps with peaks over 400 thousand.
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Furthermore, we have found high throughput extends beyond simple payments, and
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that this architecture is also able to perform safe, concurrent execution of
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programs authored in a general purpose programming language, such as C. We feel
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the extension warrants industry focus on an additional performance metric
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already common in the CPU industry, millions of *instructions* per second or
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mips. By measuring mips, we see that batching instructions within a transaction
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amortizes the cost of signature verification, lifting the maximum theoretical
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instruction throughput up to almost exactly that of centralized databases.
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Lastly, we discuss the relationships between high throughput, security and
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transaction fees. Solana's efficient use hardware drives transaction fees into
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the ballpark of 1/1000th of a cent. The drop in fees in turn makes certain
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denial of service attacks cheaper. We discuss what these attacks look like and
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Solana's techniques to defend against them.
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