What is Solar?

Meet Solar: The Energy Efficient Delegated Proof of Stake Blockchain powered by SXP
‍By: Solar delegates kimchi and fnoufnou‍

A brief history of blockchain ‍

During the past ten years, we have witnessed a tremendous amount of innovations in the areas of global payment systems, digital certifications and proofs of ownership - all thanks to the conception of blockchain. Blockchain’s ability to store immutable records in distributed digital ledgers and its decentralized means of reaching consensus on transactions between parties has led to bullet-proof digital solutions for a world where trust between parties is not required. 

Now the next wave of innovations is here. NFTs and the metaverse jumped into the spotlight in 2021, with artists, agents, venues and galleries scrambling to understand the potential of unique digital objects and concepts like proof of attendance. Corporations are experimenting with NFTs behind the scenes. They are keeping a close eye on what they can learn from experimental decentralized autonomous organizations in regards to team structure and self-organization. 

Nobody knows where things are going, but the general consensus is that corporations and professionals in any industry cannot afford to miss out on these exciting innovations. 

‍What is Solar? ‍

This is where Solar comes in. Solar’s mission is to enable anyone to experience, build and launch concepts relating to all future waves of innovation within the blockchain space. 

The road to get there is threefold: 
1. Launch an enterprise-grade, full-featured, open-source layer 1 blockchain
2. Enable the community to operate as a full DAO 
3. Support ongoing and exploratory innovations on the platform, as decided by the DAO

‍Roadmap 

Firstly, Solar launched as a new layer 1 blockchain project with a goal to become a first-class contender to the current leading next-generation blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Solana and EOS. Solar’s initial roadmap for 2022 already includes feature support for launching tokens and NFTs, a Solar metaverse, an NFT marketplace and wallets for desktop, mobile and web. And most importantly, the launch of its mainnet which took place in March 2022. ‍

Sustainability ‍

Solar is sustainable, in that it tackles headfirst some of the biggest challenges blockchain initiatives face in the world: unwarranted energy consumption while nations worldwide are actively working on their energy transitions for a more sustainable future, and risks of hostile take-overs via 51%-attacks undermining blockchain’s core promise of bullet-proof trust. Solar is fully based on open-source software and all of its own publications are available on GitHub. ‍

Consensus ‍

Solar’s consensus mechanism is delegated proof of stake (DPOS). DPOS solves the energy consumption challenge faced by proof of work blockchains. It does this not by incentivizing the addition of more computing power to the network, but by having node operators, also known as delegates, manage and secure a reasonably small number of Solar nodes each. ‍

DAO ‍

Secondly, and most fundamentally, Solar is transitioning into a decentralized, community-driven project. Solar is a community-driven ecosystem, a true DAO with no central governance. Solar’s decentralized autonomous organization includes features like voting by coin holders to elect the aforementioned delegated node operators to secure the network, and the Solar Community Foundation, which reviews and assigns grants to projects developed within the Solar ecosystem. ‍

Future market demands ‍

This brings us to the third step: agility to adopt future market demands. The layer 1 SXP blockchain and the community-driven ecosystem set Solar up to be the ideal breeding ground for all future products and services based on blockchain and related technologies. Solar’s roadmap for 2022 also includes the Solar Launchpad, where projects on Solar can be showcased to the world. ‍

A sustainable, decentralized payments blockchain ‍

Solar’s tagline, a Sustainable Decentralized Payments Blockchain, covers both the origins of Solar and its future. Payments, as Solar is the new home of SXP. SXP launched a number of years ago as the token of Swipe, the debit payment cards platform with cards issued by exchanges like Binance and FTX to allow anyone to use their crypto assets in the real world. Sustainable, as Solar’s DPOS consensus system, allows for full blockchain security without unnecessarily consuming large amounts of energy. And decentralized, highlighting the core focus on community-driven elections and development. ‍

SXP tokenomics and staking ‍

SXP coins and the SXP blockchain power Solar. As part of the mainnet launch, Solar allows SXP token holders to swap their ERC-20 or BEP-20 tokens for the native SXP coin on a 1-to-1 ratio. There will be exactly the same amount of SXP coins as there are SXP tokens on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain currently in circulation, at approximately 478 million. 

SXP holders can vote for delegates. Each SXP held in a voting wallet represents one vote. Unlike more traditional staking mechanics, voting does not lock up funds: votes can be swapped and SXP coins can be added or removed from one’s wallet at any time. Adding SXP tokens to a wallet that is already voting simply increases its vote weight. 

Continued development of the Solar blockchain and staking rewards are enabled via forging rewards. Delegates receive forging rewards for securing the network and minting new blocks of transactions. These forging rewards are often used to fund further development and promotion of Solar and its related projects, and to share with voters allowing them a healthy APY. Each delegate decides how to use forging rewards in their own way to benefit Solar. Please read each delegate’s proposal to understand how each delegate plans to strengthen the ecosystem in the short and long term. 

Where forging rewards introduce new SXP into the ecosystem, automated coin burning removes SXP from it. SXP is automatically burned with each transaction on the platform. In fact, 90% of all transaction fees are burned as soon as a transaction completes. The remainder is given to the delegates as part of their forging reward to reinvest in Solar and to share with voters. ‍

Solar: blockchain agility for the future ‍

In short: Solar leverages open source software for its layer 1 blockchain, adopts one of the most energy-efficient ways of reaching consensus among disparate groups of participants, and uses the open governance structure of DAOs to steer the direction of the project based on decentralized voting and future market demands. This makes Solar the ideal future-proof blockchain ecosystem. 

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Follow Solar! 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SolarNetwork 
Medium: https://blog.solar.org 
Telegram: https://t.me/Solar & https://t.me/@Solar_Network 
Discord: https://discord.solar.org 
Website: https://solar.org 
Whitepaper: https://solar.org/whitepaper 
Github: https://github.solar.org