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Solana logo SOL

Solana: history, founders and key events

From Mar 16, 2020 to today, every major rally, crash and upgrade, each with a dated, sourced price.

Open the interactive timeline
8dated events
6years covered
2249daily closes charted
16source links

Latest close in our data: $105.30 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2026-10-14).

Mainnet betaMar 16, 2020
ConsensusProof of stake plus Proof of History
Supply capNone (declining inflation)
Slot timeAbout 400 ms

Origin story

Solana grew out of a November 2017 whitepaper by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former Qualcomm engineer. His idea, Proof of History, is a running cryptographic clock that lets validators agree on the order of events quickly, which helps the network process many transactions per second.

Yakovenko founded Solana Labs with Raj Gokal and several former Qualcomm colleagues. The mainnet beta went live on March 16, 2020, and the network quickly became a hub for trading and NFTs because fees were a tiny fraction of a cent.

Speed came with growing pains. Solana suffered several full outages in 2021 and 2022, and its close ties to Sam Bankman Fried's FTX and Alameda Research hit the price hard when FTX collapsed in November 2022.

Founders: Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, with Greg Fitzgerald, Stephen Akridge and others.

Solana price, USD
launchrallycrashupgradelegalforkoutagemilestone

Source: Binance SOL/USDT daily closes 2020-08-11 to 2021-06-16; Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily closes 2021-06-17 to 2026-10-14. Fetched Oct 14, 2026 from free public APIs. Click a dot for the event and its price on that day.

Browse by year

201720202021202220232024

Key events

  1. Nov 1, 2017launch
    Proof of History whitepaper
    Anatoly Yakovenko publishes the idea behind Solana.
  2. Mar 16, 2020launch
    Mainnet beta launch
    Solana's mainnet beta goes live.
  3. Sep 14, 2021outage
    17 hour outage $158.64 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2021-09-14)
    A flood of bot transactions halts the network for about 17 hours.
  4. Nov 6, 2021rally
    2021 peak $258.76 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2021-11-06)
    SOL reaches its highest close of 2021.
  5. May 1, 2022outage
    NFT bot outage $89.65 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2022-05-01)
    NFT mint bots knock the network offline for about seven hours.
  6. Nov 9, 2022crash
    FTX collapse hits SOL $13.97 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2022-11-09)
    SOL loses more than half its value as FTX and Alameda unravel.
  7. Feb 25, 2023outage
    February 2023 outage $22.38 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2023-02-25)
    A large block causes about 19 hours of degraded service.
  8. Feb 6, 2024outage
    February 2024 outage $96.86 (Coinbase Exchange SOL/USD daily close, 2024-02-06)
    A bug in the program loader halts blocks for about five hours.

Compare

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Updated

Sources

Facts written in our own words. Last checked Oct 14, 2026.