How to Buy Solana (SOL) in 3 Simple Steps
A fast and powerful blockchain for developers, Solana enables the creation of low-cost and user-friendly applications for a range of uses. The blockchain's scalability has made it a top destination for decentralised apps (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralised finance (DeFi).
If you want to know how to buy Solana, you’re in the right place. This guide will take you through purchasing SOL step by step and provide more information about the project.
3 Steps to Buy Solana
1. Choose a broker or exchange
Selecting a broker or exchange will be your first step towards buying SOL. Consider the reputation of the platform and also whether it is compliant with local regulations, as these things are important factors in how safe it will be to use. The following section lists some reputable and regulated platforms to help you get started.
2. Create and fund your account
Go to the create account section of your chosen platform and fill in all the personal details you are asked for. Your account probably won’t be verified until you provide supporting documentation such as a photo ID and proof of address. After that, you can select any of the payment methods supported to fund your account.
3. Buy Solana
You are now ready to make your first purchase. Search for the appropriate Solana trading pair—i.e. if you just deposited British pounds, you should select the SOL/GBP trading pair. Click the buy button. You may have the choice between buying at the current price and specifying a future price you would like to buy at with a limit order.
Buy Solana in just a few minutes
Create a free account
Fund your account
Start trading Solana
Why trade Avalanche with a broker?
Fast and simple
Trades are instant and easy to execute
Pay your way
Brokers accept a range of payment options including credit/debit cards and even PayPal
No wallet needed
No need to set up and maintain a wallet—you can manage your crypto directly from your account
Where to Buy Solana: Compare the Top Platforms
As already mentioned, you can’t get hold of Solana until you have registered with an exchange or broker. Luckily, SOL is a popular asset so there are quite a few to choose from.
Before making your choice, consider what you want from a platform. Some of them have extra features, such as analysis tools or a demo account, which may be useful depending on your needs. See below for our shortlist of the best platform for buying Solana.
What Is Solana?
Solana is a dApp-enabled blockchain that is host to over 350 projects spanning Web 3.0, decentralised finance (DeFi), gaming, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Examples of popular apps built on Solana include the decentralised exchange (DEX) ecosystem Serum, DeFi prime brokerage portal Oxygen, and the Degenerate Ape NFT collection.
Solana is popular among dApp developers and users alike due to its fast transactions and exceedingly low costs. While transaction fees (also known as “gas”) on Ethereum, the largest dApp ecosystem, can sometimes run into the hundreds of dollars, Solana’s fee is always less than $0.01.
These low fees are enabled by Solana’s main innovation—its Proof of History time-keeping mechanism. This way of "keeping time" on the blockchain improves Solana's Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, resulting in the ability to process many, many transactions at once.
Ways to Invest in Solana
Everyone is different, which is why different people choose to invest in different ways. Some want to get in and out as quickly as possible, while others are in it for the long haul. This is just a matter of taste and we’ll discuss the benefits of both approaches below.
Buy and hold Solana
Solana has become a firm favourite in many long-term investment portfolios, for both individuals and institutions. Its innovative technology makes Solana one of the few blockchains capable of scaling for global adoption. For this reason, many investors have faith in the project’s future growth and therefore SOL’s future price potential.
One benefit to holding Solana is that it can be staked. This is a way of securing the network and generating a return on your SOL tokens.
Best Solana wallets
If you’re going to be holding SOL for a while, it can be useful to set up a private wallet and custody your tokens yourself for extra security. This ensures you have full ownership over your tokens and don’t have to rely on a centralised platform for access.
Solana-supporting software wallets, such as Exodus or Trust Wallet, are free to download and convenient for the less tech-savvy and those who want regular access to their funds. Hardware wallets, on the other hand, such as Trezor, KeepKey, and Ledger, are more secure but also more complicated and costly. They are often preferred by long-term holders with a significant amount of SOL.
Trade Solana
Solana is no different from the rest of the crypto market when it comes to the high levels of price volatility observed. This is why many short-term investors and traders like to take advantage of SOL’s sudden price movements to generate a profit.
For traders, they don’t even need to own SOL as they can speculate on its price through derivatives such as futures, options, and contracts for difference (CFDs). Traders, therefore, don’t need a wallet as they don’t actually own SOL, while short-term investors may prefer to use the web wallet provided by their platform as it is more convenient than setting up a private wallet.
Should I Buy Solana Now?
Only you can make this decision for yourself, though the information on this page should provide a useful tool. Solana’s unique architecture and blockchain innovations have already begun attracting institutional investors, who presumably believe in the future potential of the project.
Solana has had support from big names within the crypto industry, such as major exchange FTX and quantitative trading firm Alameda Research, which selected the blockchain to build their DEX project Serum on.
The price of SOL has also been helped by the rise of gaming and NFT projects on Solana. The wildly popular Degenerate Ape NFTs brought Solana to the attention of NFT enthusiasts the world over, while both NFTs and blockchain gaming are gaining ever more fans.
The Solana ecosystem will likely continue to expand, which could make SOL a popular asset for those who believe highly scalable blockchains are the future.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Anyone can stake their SOL by delegating it to a validator. A number of wallets and exchanges support SOL staking. Some will ask you to select a validator, while others will select one for you. Simply follow the instructions provided by your chosen wallet or exchange.
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In monetary terms, this will depend on the amount of SOL you stake and what its market price is. However, at time of writing, the nominal staking APY is about 7.5%.
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Proof of History is a verifiable delay function which timestamps transactions so that validators can order transactions later, instead of waiting for other nodes to check their records.
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A Solana cluster is a group of validator nodes that hosts a specific decentralised application (dApp).
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Several programmable blockchains have been termed an “Ethereum killer”, and Solana is one of them. Ethereum is still by far the most popular programmable blockchain, but it is possible that it could one day be overtaken by a rival such as Solana, especially if the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is delayed and the Solana ecosystem continues to flourish.