What is Solana Labs?

As platforms operated by decentralized or distributed networks, blockchains frequently have multiple entities dedicated to their ongoing development and governance. These often include development studios operating as private, for-profit companies. Solana Labs is one such example, a company set up by the founder of the Solana blockchain.

Solana Labs plays a key role in the Solana ecosystem, including writing the programming for upgrades to the blockchain itself, troubleshooting issues and downtime, and incubating projects and applications built on the Solana platform.

History of Solana Labs

Solana Labs was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko in 2018. Yakavenko, a former Qualcomm engineer, was also the author of the Solana whitepaper, which laid out the proposal for Solana’s Proof of History consensus methodology. Yakovenko founded Solana Labs to bring his vision to fruition and continues to serve as the Solana Labs CEO and the main spokesperson for the Solana project (as of late 2024).

In June 2021, Solana Labs announced a $314 million raise done in a Series C private token sale from investors, including a16z and Polychain Capital.

The company is based in San Francisco, and as of September 2024, it employs 175 people.

Difference between Solana Labs and Solana Foundation

There are several differences between Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation. While both are committed to the development of the Solana ecosystem, Solana Labs, a for-profit company, has a highly technical focus. It employs developers and engineers who can work on the underlying core codebase of the Solana blockchain, solving issues and writing the programming for new features. Solana Labs is the developer of the Proof of History consensus protocol.

The Solana Foundation is focused on the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana blockchain. It operates the Solana staking pools and grant programs that provide funding to initiatives that further Solana’s decentralization and censorship resistance. The Solana Foundation is run as a Swiss non-profit entity.

Solana Labs Activities

Solana Labs has been prominent in many of the initiatives and incidents involving the Solana blockchain since its inception.

Solving outages

Solana Labs has been heavily involved in resolving the multiple outages the Solana blockchain has suffered over recent years. In March 2023, the company announced it would allocate over a third of its engineering workforce to a so-called “adversarial team” following an 18-hour stoppage where Solana had ceased processing transactions.

In February 2024, Solana Labs issued an incident report following another five-hour outage. In this instance, it attributed the incident to an infinite loop bug that had been identified previously but not adequately fixed to address all possible triggers.

Solana smartphone

Solana Labs is responsible for the development of Solana’s smartphone series. The company released the Saga Web3 smartphone in April 2023, which came with several Solana apps, including NFT marketplace Magic Eden and DeFi dapps Jupiter and Mango, preinstalled.

Initial sales were sufficiently poor for the smartphone project to be deemed a flop; however, in December 2023, the phone became caught up in a memecoin craze. Buyers were eligible to receive an airdrop of the memecoin BONK, which was undergoing an impressive price rally, sufficient to make the value of the rewards higher than the value of the phone itself.

In September 2024, Solana Labs revealed a new smartphone called Seeker, which aims to offer enhanced utility to crypto users and developers, such as an unrestricted app store and token launch capabilities.

GameShift API

In late 2023, Solana Labs launched GameShift, an API for game developers to bring Solana’s on-chain capabilities into their games without needing to undertake any blockchain app programming. It aims to lower the barrier to Web3 access for traditional game programmers who may not want to learn blockchain programming and offers features like user onboarding, in-game asset minting and marketplaces, and payments.

In May 2024, Solana Labs announced a collaboration with Google Cloud for Google Cloud customers to access GameShift.

Bond Loyalty platform

In June 2024, Solana Labs announced Bond, a platform aimed at improving brand customer engagement. The platform leverages Solana as the underlying technology to introduce blockchain capabilities into the loyalty program experience.

According to the company, Bond includes features such as easier cross-brand partnerships that don’t require the sharing of customer data, the creation of digital collectibles, and more secure and reliable authentication of digital and physical goods.

Incubator program

Solana Labs also operates an incubator program for projects wanting to build on Solana. The program runs for three months at a time, inviting teams to work alongside Solana Labs engineers in a collaborative development exercise that includes mentorship and business support. As of late 2024, seven projects had graduated from the program.

Solana Labs essentials

• Solana Labs is a software and hardware company dedicated to the technical development of the Solana blockchain and its ecosystem.
• The company is responsible for developing Solana’s unique Proof of History algorithm and has been involved in resolving several outages of the Solana blockchain.
• Solana Labs also runs several other projects related to Solana, including the Solana smartphone series, Bond loyalty platform, and incubator program.