Solana, a blockchain platform in Layer-1, has introduced a new solution that intends to significantly decrease the expense of storing data on the blockchain. This technology, known as state compression, is capable of reducing the cost of producing one million non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Solana network to around $110.
In a blog post on April 6, Jon Wong, the tech lead of the Solana Foundation, stated that compressed NFTs are now available on the mainnet-beta and will power the next generation of innovative on-chain product experiences.
He added that compressed NFTs are substantially less expensive than their uncompressed counterparts, with a cost reduction of 2,400-24,000 times for NFTs with comparable structures. Users on Twitter have hailed the state compression solution as a revolutionary development and a way to enhance the attractiveness of Solana for enterprise use cases.
1/ Solana's low fees have made it an industry leader. But thanks to a recent innovation from teams across the ecosystem, it's about to cost even less.
Introducing state compression, a new way to store data on Solana that lowers cost significantly. https://t.co/0baMJ0vOn1
— Solana (@solana) April 6, 2023
The Solana tech lead explained that state compression utilizes Merkle trees, a data structure renowned for its ability to condense the verifiability of a data tree into a hash or fingerprint of the current state of the tree.
By relying on this compression-friendly data structure, developers can store a small amount of data on the blockchain and update it directly on the Solana ledger. This significantly reduces the cost of data storage while still utilizing Solana’s base layer’s security and decentralization.
According to Jon Wong, the development of state compression was a collaborative effort across various ecosystems. The solution was created by developers from Metaplex and Solana Labs. This was with contributions from Solflare and Phantom and supported by RPC node providers and indexers such as SimpleHash, Triton, and Helius.
Various projects in the Solana ecosystem, including Dialect, Wordcel, Crossmint, and Helium, are already utilizing state compression to implement solutions that range from NFT minting to business loyalty program integrations and user experience enhancements.
More on Solana
Solana is a high-performance blockchain platform that aims to provide an efficient, secure, and scalable solution for decentralized applications (dApps). It was launched in 2017 by Anatoly Yakovenko, a former software engineer at Qualcomm, and is based on a unique consensus mechanism called Proof-of-History (PoH).
PoH enables Solana to process a large number of transactions per second, making it one of the fastest blockchains available today. Solana’s architecture is designed to operate as a Layer-1 blockchain, meaning that it has its own consensus mechanism and does not rely on other networks for security or transaction confirmation.
Solana’s ecosystem includes a range of tools and services, such as the Solana wallet, Solana Explorer, and Solana CLI. It also supports the development of decentralized applications and the creation of new tokens through smart contracts on its blockchain. Solana’s native token, SOL, is used for transaction fees and as a means of exchange on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) built on the Solana network.
Overall, Solana’s unique consensus mechanism, high scalability, and developer-friendly ecosystem make it a promising blockchain platform for the future of decentralized applications and the broader blockchain industry.
