Solana vs Bitcoin, what is the difference?

The main Solana vs Bitcoin difference is purpose. Bitcoin was designed as peer-to-peer money secured by mining, and it changes slowly on purpose. Solana was designed as a high-throughput platform for apps, tokens and payments, secured by staked SOL. That leads to big differences in speed, fees and supply. See what is Bitcoin and what is Solana for each network on its own.

SOL vs BTC, how do the networks work?

Bitcoin uses proof of work. Miners spend computing power to add blocks and earn new bitcoin plus fees. Bitcoin.org says nobody owns or controls the network, and changes only take hold if users choose to run them.

Solana uses proof of stake. Validators lock up SOL, take turns producing blocks and vote on them. It has used proof of history as a shared clock alongside its Tower BFT voting. Validators earn the fees described below as well as newly issued SOL. The broader trade-offs are covered in proof of work vs proof of stake.

How does Solana vs Bitcoin speed compare?

Bitcoin.org says a new block arrives about every 10 minutes on average, and many users wait for several confirmations, with six a common benchmark, before treating a payment as settled. The Lightning Network offers faster payments on a separate layer.

Solana divides time into slots. Its slot time was cut from 400 to 200 milliseconds in four steps, the last on October 9, 2026. Under Tower BFT, full finality takes about 12.8 seconds. Solana's Alpenglow upgrade is scheduled to activate at the start of epoch 1064, expected on October 21, 2026, and targets finality of about 150 milliseconds. Solana's page asks users to treat the exact time as an estimate.

How do fees differ?

Bitcoin fees depend on a transaction's size in bytes, not the amount sent, and rise and fall with demand for block space. They go to miners.

Solana charges a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, half burned and half paid to the validator, plus an optional priority fee that goes fully to the validator.

What is the Solana vs Bitcoin supply difference?

Bitcoin.org says only 21 million bitcoin will ever be created, with new issuance halving over time.

SOL has no fixed cap. Solana's docs describe inflation that began at 8% a year, falls by 15% each year and settles at a long-term 1.5%. In August 2026, validators approved a proposal, SGP-0002, to double the yearly reduction to 30%, ForkLog reported. Approval alone does not change issuance. The change still has to be built into validator software and activated, so as of October 2026 the published schedule may lag the vote. The fee burn removes some SOL, but it does not cap the total.