Programs on Solana are written in common programming languages and run fast and cheaply. What it is like to develop for the network.
Smart contracts are called programs on Solana. They are most often written in Rust, a modern programming language that prevents many common programming errors.
Programs are kept separate from the data they work on. That makes it clearer what a program can change, and makes it possible to run many programs at once.
Solana has a library of ready-made programs for common tasks, such as creating and transferring tokens. Developers therefore do not have to write everything from scratch.
That makes it faster to get started, and safer, because the standard programs have been thoroughly tested.
There are tools and code libraries for the most widely used programming languages, so websites and apps can talk to Solana. Hackathons and grants from the Solana Foundation have attracted many developers.
Developer activity stayed high even after the FTX crisis, which helped the network recover.
Solana's model is fast, but harder to learn than Ethereum's. Programs written for Ethereum also cannot simply be moved to Solana.