The <a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/solana-surges-notably-by-30-may-surpass-tether-and-cardano-if-the-form-continues/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solana</a> cryptocurrency has had a good month, with a year-over-year increase of nearly 12,000%. It is presently trading at roughly $211, down from a record high of nearly $260 earlier this month. Solana bills itself as "the world's quickest blockchain and the fastest-growing crypto ecosystem," with "over 400 projects spanning <a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/defi-surpasses-100-billion-for-the-first-time-as-cryptocurrency-prices-rise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeFi</a>, NFTs, Web3, and more." Both developers and customers pay less than one cent per transaction, and block times are 400 milliseconds. It's decentralized and claims to be "censorship-resistant," which means it'll "remain open for applications to run freely and transactions will never be blocked."

And all these reasons add up to make it the world’s 5th largest cryptocurrency at the time of writing. The first international conference of the Solana Foundation took place in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 7-10, 2021. The breakpoint was the first global gathering of Solana's builders, partners, and supporters to discuss ideas and network.

Hundreds of people attended the sold-out event, which featured a jam-packed schedule of speeches and workshops hosted by dozens of renowned guest speakers from across the world. This Cryptoknowmics article will provide an outlook over how Solana is contributing to the crypto space and blockchain industry by bringing DeFi and <a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/news/how-smart-contracts-can-accelerate-your-driving/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Smart contracts</a> together. 
<h2>A Crypto Workshop for Builders and Developers</h2>
The timetable for hands-on technical workshops at SUD Lisbon began after numerous speeches regarding the notable status of Solana's network, the current multi-chain landscape, and a debate on scale and censorship resistance. Two back-to-back events took guests through some basic and essential topics about smart contracts on Solana. The first class, Instant Smart Contracts Development on Solana, focused on assisting newcomers and seasoned pros alike in developing dApps on Solana without the need for any pre-installs or specific software.

Following that, Marius Ciubotariu of Hubble Protocol presented Maintaining Global State in Solana, which demonstrated to participants how Hubble uses Rust to overcome a major challenge for smart contracts while dealing with thousands of users on Solana. 

Marius' workshop remained one of the day's most tech-oriented programs. It demonstrated how Rust, the world's most popular programming language for the past six years, can be used to develop smart contracts on Solana to outperform EVM smart contracts.

Marius first arrived at Solana as a participant during the Solana Season Hackathon. He helped write all of the Rust code for ZeroInterest, a project that received an honorable mention during this hackathon. Marius comes to Solana with a wealth of FinTech experience, having spent over a decade at Bloomberg designing exotic derivative products and leading teams. Marius said:

“When I saw how Solana is parallelizing transactions, it reminded me of Rust’s memory model, and I couldn’t believe why other chains haven’t gone for this approach as well.” Marius goes on to say that, “In retrospect, it’s blindingly obvious that this is the best way to scale a parallel system. Both Rust and Solana share a philosophy learned from years of Comp Sci &amp; Prog Lang design, and developers that finally join the Rust/Solana bandwagon will finally be able to unlock the power of parallelization.”
<h2>A “Better DeFi” In the Making</h2>
Sam Bankman Fried, CEO of FTX and Alameda Research, thinks similarly about the power of parallelization in an interview by saying, “What does Solana do to distinguish itself from yet another Proof of Stake blockchain? The key thing you run into is parallelization. If you have to put everything in serial, then that’s going to end up constraining what you can do. Parallelization massively increases the total throughput of the blockchain.”

In the world of blockchains, Solana is a monster. With current throughput of 65,000 TPS, it is the world's fastest public blockchain, and Solana is aiming for 700,000 TPS soon. Because of the high speeds and low costs, Solana's ecosystem can be used by anybody in the world, making blockchain technology and DeFi commonplace.

Rust is a monster as well. It's a universal coding language with a robust set of community resources created by Google, Amazon, and Facebook. When these tools are combined with Rust's compiler, developers may spend less time worrying about technical issues and more time focused on smart contract logic, making it easier to produce DeFi-safe code. 

Solana's 65,000 TPS delivered for pennies could be the future of the world's transaction settlement layer. Financial systems must operate securely and at high speeds delivered at a low cost. Gradually, the pros of a secure and fast programming language like Rust combined with the speed and efficiency of Solana could mean DeFi 2.0 will have an even better chance to meet the needs of a global community. 
<h2>The Bottom Line </h2>
Solana's decision to use Rust to implement its smart contracts could be the next step in making DeFi available to the rest of the globe due to its ergonomic and easier-to-write code. The cherry on top of the Rust and Solana combination is that these two powerful technologies are realistically opening the door to further blockchain use cases that would be hard to implement with slower blockchains and less-developed programming languages.

Solana’s First Conference Brings Together DeFi 2.0 and Smart Contracts

In the recent Solana conference the team announced it is contributing to the crypto space and blockchain by bringing DeFi and Smart contracts together. 

Meghna is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Journalism &amp; New Media specializing in  Print Journalism. She is currently working as a content writer for Agio Support Solutions Pvt. Ltd. She aims to provide quality content and strategy in the field of cryptocurrency and work with digital marketing platforms to deliver brand-specific strategies.

Solana’s First Conference Brings Together DeFi 2.0 and Smart Contracts

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