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The Solana blockchain has emerged as arguably the most serious challenger to Ethereum’s dominance in the smart contracts sector. Solana is capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, while keeping transaction costs extremely low. As the adoption of Solana grows, the platform’s native asset SOL has ascended up the market capitalization rankings and entered the top 10.
One of the reasons why Solana was able to become so popular so fast is the strong Solana developer ecosystem and the myriad of tools that users can access to make their Solana experience as seamless as possible.
Solflare review
Of course, the most important tool every cryptocurrency user needs to have is a wallet, and Solana thankfully offers some very strong options in this area. In this article, we’ll be checking out Solflare, one of the most popular wallets for the Solana blockchain. According to the team, over 24% of the circulating SOL supply is being staked through Solflare.
The Solflare wallet comes in different shapes and sizes, which you can choose depending on your needs. There’s a web version, which you can access through the Solflare wallet. Alternatively, you can add the Solflare extension to your Chrome or Firefox web browser – this will be the best choice if you’re used to other browser extension wallets like MetaMask. Solflare is also working on a mobile wallet, which should be coming out soon.
Solflare was created by Solrise, a team that has plenty of experience in the Solana ecosystem, as they’ve also developed Solana Beach, Solrise Finance and Solrise Pulse.
Solflare is an example of a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. Only the user knows their private key, which is necessary for making a transaction – the Solflare team could not get access to your wallet even if they wanted to. Most cryptocurrency users care about reducing their reliance on third parties and intermediaries, which is why non-custodial wallets are so popular. If you’re fine with doing a little bit of extra work to properly back up your wallet, a non-custodial crypto wallet is certainly the way to go.
The drawback of non-custodial wallets is that they place all of the responsibility on the user. For example, if you forget your password and haven’t securely backed up your seed phrase, you will no longer be able to access your funds.
Solflare has a suite of features designed to make the life of Solana users easier. SOL holders can stake their coins directly through the wallet, while NFT owners can admire their collection directly in Solflare, with support for both visual and audio NFTs. Solflare has also integrated support for Ledger hardware wallets.
Solflare of course supports the Solana mainnet, but you can also use it to experiment on the Solana testnet and devnet.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the most important aspects of the Solflare Solana wallet.
Solflare setup and user interface
The process of setting up a Solana wallet with Solflare is straightforward. First, you’ll need to provide a password that you’ll be using to log into your wallet. Obviously, creating a strong password is recommended to make your account as secure as possible.
Next, you’ll be presented with a 24-word seed phrase that can be used to recover your wallet. This seed phrase can be imported into any Solana wallet. You should back up your 24-word seed phrase carefully (the order of the words is important) and you should never share it with anyone, as it unlocks full access to your wallet. When you’re setting up a Solflare wallet, the platform will double-check that you backed up your 24-word seed properly.
After you enter your seed phrase, the Solflare wallet is ready to go.
The user interface is intuitive, and gives you access to the most important features right away. At the top, you’ll see your balances of SOL. You can also create new accounts for different SPL tokens, which are custom tokens issued on the Solana blockchain – think of it like ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
By clicking on your profile image, you can see additional options like importing/exporting private keys or importing a Ledger hardware wallet.
SOL staking capabilities
Solana is a Proof-of-Stake blockchain. While most users won’t be running their own validators on the network, it’s possible to delegate your stake to a validator and earn a portion of the staking rewards that they earn. Staking is a very attractive option for all SOL holders, as it passively provides SOL rewards and doesn’t require a big commitment – you can deactivate your stake any time you want, and your SOL will become available for transactions within a few days.
When staking SOL through Solflare, you can of course choose which validator you want to stake with. If you don’t know which validator to go with, you can check out SolanaBeach, a helpful platform where you can compare validators.
Currently, staking SOL can get you an APY of around 7%. However, your APY will depend on multiple factors, for example which validator you’re delegating your SOL stake to.
Ledger integration
If you own a Ledger hardware wallet, you can use it to make transactions through the Solflare wallet. If you want to learn more, you can check out this helpful guide on the official Ledger website.
NFT features
Due to the massive gas costs associated with minting and transfering NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, the Solana blockchain is becoming a very popular destination for NFT aficionados. Solflare caters to the NFT crowd by giving users a way to enjoy their NFTs directly through the wallet. Solflare supports multiple NFT formats – whether your NFT is in the form of an image/video or audio, you can enjoy it through the Solflare wallet.
Token swaps
The Solflare wallet has an integrated token swapping feature that lets you swap between different Solana-based tokens directly from your Solflare wallet. However, we’d like to see the project provide more information on how these swaps are performed, as the wallet itself and the resources provided by Solflare don’t go into a lot of detail.
The bottom line
If you’re looking for a Solana wallet, it’s hard to go wrong with Solflare. The Solflare wallet is suitable both for simple transactions on the Solana network, or interacting with more sophisticated decentralized applications. For users who prefer the enhanced security of hardware wallets, Solflare offers an integration with Ledger, which can come in very handy. Most SOL holders will likely want to stake their coins, and Solflare has proven itself as the preferred SOL staking option for many users – there’s more than $10 billion worth of SOL being staked through Solflare at the time of writing.
