American Banker Podcast Solana 101: What it is and why some banks use it
Mar 31, 2026
Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute and advocate for Solana and decentralized networks. He explains why Solana scales differently than Ethereum. He describes Solana’s shared cryptographic clock and tradeoffs between throughput and validator requirements. He highlights real-world bank use cases, stablecoin suitability, interoperability, regulatory and technical considerations.
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How Living In Beijing Sparked A Blockchain Career
- Miller Whitehouse-Levine became interested in decentralized networks while studying in Beijing in 2013–2014 and encountering Bitcoin among expats.
- That personal shift from noticing state-centered systems in China to embracing Bitcoin's individual-empowering ledger led him to pursue blockchain work.
Solana Solves Ethereum Throughput With A Cryptographic Clock
- Solana was built to solve Ethereum's throughput and fee limits by borrowing ideas from telecommunications to increase bandwidth.
- The founders embedded a cryptographic clock to avoid global ordering bottlenecks and enable much higher transactions per second.
Multi Lane Blockchain Achieved By Baking In Time
- Solana uses a shared cryptographic timestamp to agree on transaction order so validators don't have to vote on ordering before processing.
- Miller compares it to adding a clock to a sports replay so everyone instantly agrees when events occurred.