# Why Solana For a blockchain economy to be a viable workhorse of decentralized finance and gaming, the network must be able to handle a high throughput. The inherent design of leading platforms in the DeFi space has severely limited growth and adoption. As networks expand, congestion increases, and transactions become slower and more expensive. Solana is an extremely fast layer-1 blockchain, capable of 50,000 transactions per second. This is achieved thanks to its Proof-of-History consensus protocol, which uses a sequential-hashing verifiable delay function to maintain a cryptographic record of events as a function of time. This approach permits reassembly of on-chain transaction events asynchronously irrespective of network delays. This also serves as the foundation for a blockchain economy with a low likelihood of serious congestion, thereby resulting in refreshingly low transaction fees which do not fluctuate during times of high network traffic. We chose Solana for its potential as a truly web-scale blockchain with transactional scalability that positions it to become the preferred network for decentralized applications and gaming. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://starlaunch.gitbook.io/starlaunch-a-cadets-guide/the-basics/why-solana.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.