In this precious 2018 interview, Solana founder Toly recounts his technical background: he worked at Qualcomm developing operating systems, was a core developer of the BREW kernel, wrote more than half of the kernel by object size, and was responsible for the compiler and code generation.

He then delved into the DSP architecture on processors, understanding how modern mobile chips compress numerous components onto a single silicon chip, and considering how time-stepping solves synchronization problems from the perspective of "distributed systems."

It was on this foundational engineering experience that Toly introduced Solana's key innovation—Proof of History. He described it as a way of "encoding time into data," enabling on-chain nodes to advance state updates at a faster and more consistent pace. This design ultimately became the core idea behind Solana's high-performance architecture.