The Solana (SOL) network faced a significant issue on February 25 that restricted the ability of users to execute transactions.
The network experienced a fork event that created multiple versions of its transaction history, hindering its functionality, including cryptocurrency trading and asset transfer. The crisis started around 00:53 New York time and escalated rapidly. Validators and Solana engineers are trying to identify the cause of the fork event, but it is still unclear.
The fork event began to negatively impact the Solana network, increasing the RAM of the validators. The network’s transaction performance fell off a cliff, reducing the number of transactions it could process per second. The Solana data site recorded a decrease in the transaction rate from 5000 TPS to around 93 TPS.
This is not the first time Solana has experienced such a problem; suffered multiple outages in 2022 and 2021. Solana had reformed its systems to handle incoming traffic after previous outages, but this most recent incident had no immediate explanation. The network’s current challenges are likely related to a bug in the new version of Solana’s code that had just come online hours before the incident.
Without a solid fix to the issue, validators began downgrading to the previous version to revive Solana’s performance. Subsequently, Solana employees supported this action. However, it can take hours before the vast majority of validators revert to the old software. There is also no guarantee that the downgrade will work.
Meanwhile, Solana’s price has fallen nearly 4% and is trading near its 24-hour low at $22.65. It remains to be seen if the Solana blockchain will recover and if this will trigger a rally in the altcoin price.
This most recent Solana hard fork event has sparked a reaction among industry insiders. St. Gnu, a pseudonymous validator, argued that Solana’s core developers should create more paid features to make spam less cheap. He claims the network is too cheap to do business with, even with priority rates. The problem is that there is no high cost if a user wants to spam the network with transactions.
According to SolBlaze, who runs a liquid stake group and is active in developer circles, coordinating a reboot attempt means the chain will be completely offline, which is always a last resort. It is still being determined when Solana will be fully operational.
Solana is a high-performance blockchain that aims to compete with the Ethereum network. Their goal is to offer fast transaction speeds and low fees. Its recent crisis has raised concerns among users about its functionality and reliability.
