Solana (SOL) has been experiencing the biggest technological crisis in its history since Tuesday afternoon. Probably overloaded by bots, the blockchain was paralyzed. Now a reboot is supposed to help.
At Solana (SOL), the alarm sirens blared yesterday afternoon: Via Twitter, it had to be announced that the network was not running stably. The resources in the blockchain of Solana were overloaded, which led to an automatic rejection of new orders. In plain language: anyone who wanted to carry out transactions with Solana or was waiting for smart contracts to be processed was left looking down the tube. Logically, the price curve of SOL quickly turned negative, at times falling by more than ten percent. It was not until Wednesday morning that the all-clear was given: a quick update and a restart of the network restored Solana’s functionality.
Solana down for 16 hours – what happened?
As frantic research into the cause of the technological knockout at Solana began, the head of Solana Labs was the supposed first with an explanation. On Twitter, Anatoly Yakovenko wrote that a launch at Raydium (RAY) had resulted in 300,000 requests per second to Solana’s blockchain. The DeFi protocol wanted to run a decentralized offering of new coins on a first-come, first-served basis .Therefore, resourceful participants had apparently sent bots into the race, provoking 300,000 TPS and more. Solana itself advertises that it can easily handle at least 50,000 transactions per second.
Network points (nodes) were apparently temporarily shut down as a result of the events. Around midnight, Solana headquarters sent a sobering status report via Twitter. Attempts to stabilize the network had failed. Therefore, a decision had to be made about a restart. The necessary software was also made available. It was not until Wednesday morning that the relieving news appeared: more than 80 percent approval for a restart, which began immediately. In the course of the next few hours, Solana’s ecosystem should be fully functional again.
The price curve is also recovering in parallel from its fall, SOL has again exceeded the mark of 160 US dollars.
Conclusion: Solana faces questions after network failure
Back in December 2020, Solana was out of action for six hours, but at that time SOL did not play such a prominent role in the crypto market. In the summer of 2021, however, Solana flew from one all-time high to the next and was even hailed by some as a challenger to Ethereum (ETH). The current total failure of Solana not only leaves considerable doubt as to whether the architecture of the network is up to future challenges. Solutions such as some sort of spam protection or the option to prioritize transactions are certainly being discussed. But what is even more concerning for the die-hard crypto community is how it can be possible in a supposedly decentralized network to impose a majority for changes in the code and a restart so quickly? Is Solana truly decentralized, or is power pooled among a few large nodes? The Solana shock is likely to reverberate.
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