There are stores and organisations abroad who are begininng to accept cryptocurrency, but here in Denmark, the development is a lot slower. Take Germany for example - they have ATMs where you can buy and sell certain cryptocurrencies - usually bitcoin and ethereum.

If you use solana as an investment, you need to be aware of the uncertainty and the risks connected to cryptocurrency investing.

Lastly, you need to be aware that solana uses a combination of proof-of-stake and proof-of-history to validate transactions on the blockchain. Among other things, this is opposite to bitcoin and ethereum , who use proof-of-work .

Because proof-of-history is a relatively new invention from 2017, there could still be security breaches in the technology which we aren’t 100% familiar with as of yet. You also need to keep this in mind.

But to answer the overall question: “Is solana safe?”, we first need to look at the three topics separately:

1. Which countries allow the use of solana, and which countries don’t?
2. Why is solana as an investment connected to risks and uncertainty?
3. Which security implications does it have that solana uses a combination of proof-of-stake and proof-of-history?

Which countries allow solana as a payment method?

It can be uncertain to sit on large amounts of solana or any other cryptocurrency, if you also expect to use the cryptocurrency as a regular payment method .

It could work in countries like El Salvador, where the cryptocurrency bitcoin actually has been regulated as a legal payment method since 2019. This gives hope that solana could be accepted as a legal payment method around the globe in the future.

On the other hand, there are countries where the use of crypto is strictly prohibited and illegal.

On the map from Statista you can see which countries who:

What makes solana an uncertain investment?

When you trade cryptocurrency and solana there’s a risk that you could lose parts or the entirety of your investment. This is because crypto and solana are unregulated assets. Meaning that there are no central authorities to protect you as a consumer.

If you have money in a bank, and the bank goes bankrupt, your money is protected by a central authority: In Denmark, that authority is Garantiformuen , who covers deposits equivalent to up to 100,000 euro.

But if you lose your solana tokens as a consequence of a crypto platform going bankrupt, you’re not protected.

That’s one of the reasons why solana is an uncertain investment. You don’t have access to the same safetynet here, because cryptocurrencies still are unregulated assets as of 2022.

Besides that, solana and other cryptocurrencies are very volatile assets. That means that the prices of them can rise and fall very quickly in value from one day to the next. The more volatile an investment is, the more uncertain it is. The same goes for any other assets such as stocks or real estate investments. 

If you’re considering buying a house for example, you would be more cautious of purchasing it if you knew that the price of the house potentially could lose up to 100% of its value from one day to the next. But at the same time, there’s a risk that the house could be worth 10 times as much the next day.

That’s also kind of how solana works. You should consider whether or not solana is in line with your willingness to take risks.

Buy solana

What security implications does it have that solana uses proof-of-history?

Solana is best known as the cryptocurrency that developed the validation method - or consensus model as it’s also called - proof-of-history. On top of proof-of-history, solana combines its blockchain with the validation method proof-of-stake.

Tip: You can read more about proof-of-stake in our post about cardano who uses this validation method.

The whole idea of using proof-of-history and proof-of-stake instead of the “classic” proof-of-work method , which ethereum and bitcoin uses, is to scale the technology.

With proof-of-work, the blockchain technology can’t handle that many transactions per second. And that’s necessary to scale the technology to the masses.

Bitcoin , for example, can only handle around 7 transactions per second, and if bitcoin ever were to become a universal payment method around the world, 7 transactions per second would be far too inefficient.

In comparison, Visa can handle about 24,000 transactions per second.

In order to cater to this challenge and make cryptocurrency a serious contender to the current payment systems, the validation methods proof-of-stake and proof-of-history were invented.

The result of the two methods are that blockchains can handle far more transactions per second. According to solana, their blockchain could theoretically handle a whopping 65,000 transactions per second.

Proof-of-history is an extra feature that is further developing the proof-of-stake concept. From a security perspective, it’s most interesting to look at the method proof-of-stake to see whether or not solana technologically speaking is secure.

Proof-of-stake

For a proof-of-stake blockchain such as solana to work effectively, a network of people who validates activities on the blockchain needs to exist - where activities could be buying and selling crypto, for example.

The person who ends up validating the activities is called a validator. With proof-of-stake, the validator is selected on the basis of how many coins they stake.

Example:

Imagine there are 1,000 solana coins in total. A validator called Henry has 270 coins which he puts into the validator-draw. Henry now has a 270/1,000th - or 27% - chance of being selected to validate the next block of activities on the blockchain.

If Henry tries to trick the blockchain by typing in false information, it’s up to the rest of the network to check and evaluate whether or not Henry’s validator is correct or true. Luckily, it’s actually a pretty simple task for the network to check.

When Henry gets revealed for cheating, all 270 coins he staked will be confiscated. That’s why there’s a large incentive to not cheat - and that helps to strengthen solana’s security.

Proof-of-history

With proof-of-history all transactions will automatically receive a timestamp, which ensures that the order, or sequence, of transactions is correct. And this actually saves the validator network a lot of time and resources, which results in more transactions being validated per second.

In a proof-of-stake blockchain, the network of validators needs to agree on the sequence of transactions - this is where solana’s proof-of-history saves a lot of time, because the network doesn’t have to use time and resources to agree upon the timing and sequence of transactions. The blockchain takes care of that all by itself.

Tip: You can read more about proof-of-history in our post "What is solana? ”.

Cryptocurrencies can rise and fall

When you trade cryptocurrencies, you need to be aware that it carries a large risk. The value of your cryptocurrency can both rise and fall, and you can risk losing the entire amount you’ve invested in cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency trading is done through Lunar Block. Lunar Block is not regulated by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finanstilsynet). That means you won’t have the same protection as when trading e.g. stocks or other regulated assets.

We do not counsel

We do not advise on currencies and do not make recommendations for either buying or selling. We can provide factual information about the different currencies, but past price developments are not an indication of future developments.

No information from Lunar Block should therefore be considered as recommendations and all decisions are up to you alone.