When President Trump launched the TRUMP memecoin o

When President Trump launched the TRUMP memecoin on the eve of his inauguration, he did so on the Solana blockchain. 

Memecoins, which are jokey crypto tokens that trade based on vibes, are currently the most popular use for Solana. The network’s long-term vision — for capital markets to all be housed within a shared global system — is much broader than that. Solana’s chance of achieving this largely comes from its speed and the cheap transaction fees, which also happens to be why memecoin traders like it so much.

Solana is a blockchain, and a blockchain is a decentralized digital asset ledger. Every bank operates an asset ledger, but the ledgers don’t work together very well. They’re often slow and expensive to move money around on because banks and other existing asset ledgers use inefficient infrastructure. 

Blockchains are made up of global computers running software that ensures the asset ledger is accurate, which can be expensive. It costs over a dollar on average to transact on the Bitcoin network, and it costs $0.05 on average to buy something on Ethereum. What’s more, Bitcoin and Ethereum — which are the largest and second-largest blockchains — only process a few handfuls of transactions per second. Credit cards handled an average of 1,700 transactions per second in 2023, according to data from Capital One.