The blockchain has experienced several major outages, was subjected to a hack, and a class action lawsuit was filed alleging that Solana sells unregistered securities, and misled investors about the number of tokens.

[needs update] According to the company's white paper, Solana runs on a proof of stake model.

[5][independent source needed] The Solana blockchain was designed to support smart contracts and decentralized apps in particular.

[6] In June 2021, Solana Labs sold $314 million worth of its native cryptocurrency, SOL, to a group of funds led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital.

According to the lawsuit, Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder of Solana Labs, lent a market maker more than 11.3 million tokens in April 2020 and failed to disclose this information to the public.

[12] In June 2023, the SEC sued Coinbase, alleging that Solana and twelve other currencies offered by the platform failed the Howey Test and qualified as securities.

[6] In November 2022, the price of Solana dropped by 40 percent in one day following the bankruptcy of FTX, due to sell off from Alameda Research.

[21] On 11 June 2023, Solana dropped nearly 30% in one day after the SEC announced that it would make the case in court that Solana is a financial security, causing big exchanges to liquidate their holdings, including Robinhood which delisted SOL and other tokens named by the SEC in its lawsuit.