  The solar coronal heating problem refers to the question why the temperature
of the Sun's corona is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of
its surface. Almost 70 years after the discovery, this puzzle is still one of
the major challenges in astrophysics. The current basic paradigm of coronal
heating is unable to explain all the observational features of the heating.
Here we argue that a new paradigm is required to solve the puzzle in a
self-consistent manner. The alternative approach is based on the kinetic theory
of drift waves. We show, with qualitative and quantitative arguments, that the
drift waves have the potential to satisfy all coronal heating requirements.
