Blockchain is an implementation of a fault tolerant replicated state machine. Current publicly available blockchains do not rely on time, or make a weak assumption about the participants abilities to keep time. Each node in the network usually relies on their own local clock without knowledge of any other participants clocks in the network. The lack of a trusted source of time means that when a message timestamp is used to accept or reject a message, there is no guarantee that every other participant in the network will make the exact same choice. The PoH presented here is designed to create a ledger with verifiable passage of time, i.e. duration between events and message ordering. It is anticipated that every node in the network will be able to rely on the recorded passage of time in the ledger without trust.
The future of cloud storage and web services can be decentralized, encrypted, permissionless, and secure. Decentralized file storage systems have the potential to eliminate high markup and human capital costs, and set new standards of unit economics for distributed data storage. Solana provides a scalable path for this future to become a reality.
