Solana developers have unveiled a new hash system designed to address scalability issues arising from increased network usage.
The proposal, titled SIMD-215 , introduces a lattice-based homomorphic hash function that aims to improve the way the network verifies and tracks user accounts, ultimately enabling it to efficiently manage billions of accounts.
Currently, Solana’s network regularly recalculates the balance of all accounts, which becomes increasingly cumbersome as the user base grows. Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, noted this problem, known as the „state growth problem,” in a recent post on X.
He explained that creating new accounts requires the network to verify their uniqueness, which is computationally expensive in the current system. The execution environment must maintain a global index of all accounts, which creates a significant burden for each network node.
Hash Accounts Lattice, described in the proposal, aims to eliminate this bottleneck by introducing instant verification, eliminating the need to recalculate the entire balance of all accounts.
The homomorphic hash function allows the network to update its state by processing only accounts that have changed, instead of recalculating everything. Cryptocurrency research firm Republik Labs compared this approach to cleaning a house, where only the dirty rooms are cleaned, instead of scrubbing the entire house every day.
This method promises to save time and computing resources while maintaining the integrity of the system.
If implemented, the proposal could significantly increase Solana’s speed and performance, making it better equipped to handle mass adoption. Solana remains a key player in decentralized finance (DeFi) and on-chain activity, surpassing Ethereum in terms of trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX).
According to DefiLlam data, Solana DEX recorded a trading volume of more than $113 billion last month, compared to Ethereum’s $78.9 billion, reflecting its growing dominance in this space.
As reported, Solana has overtaken Ethereum as the most popular destination for new developers in 2024, breaking Ethereum’s eight-year dominance in this space. According to a December 12 report by Electric Capital, Solana saw 7625 new programmers join its ecosystem this year, surpassing Ethereum’s 6456. The increase was mainly due to increased programmer activity in Asia.
Remarkably, Solana also briefly surpassed Ethereum on two notable occasions. on March 18, Solana’s network activity surpassed Ethereum’s due to increased demand for Solana-based meme coins. Later, on October 28, Solana’s daily network fee generation surpassed Ethereum’s for a 24-hour period.
In another incident, earlier this month, prominent blockchain researcher Max Resnick announced that he had moved from Ethereum infrastructure company ConsenSys to SOL-focused research and development firm Anza.
Resnick previously led research at ConsenSys’ special mechanisms group, where he expressed support for alternative scaling models.
