Experts Identify Cause of Solana’s Recurring Outages

The inability of the network to handle a growing volume of transactions is the reason behind Solana’s recurring outages, according to a team of experts led by journalist Colin Wu.

Solana Outages Again After a Year: Review the Historical Outage Records

Read more https://t.co/h3OHHvoQLm pic.twitter.com/i2uQbpg1iB

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 7, 2024

On February 6, the protocol failed to process blocks for nearly five hours. According to Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck, the issue was related to the Berkley Packet Filter mechanism, which facilitates the deployment and updating of applications on Solana.

Experts noted that this is far from the first outage the network has experienced:

• In May 2021, numerous transactions failed to finalize due to unstable blockchain performance;
• In September, network performance sharply declined for about an hour;
• Later that month, transaction volume related to the Raydium IDO led to memory overflow;
• In January 2022, arbitrage bots’ activity caused a 30-hour network halt;
• Subsequently, the blockchain could not handle a surge in NFT transactions;
• In June, a vulnerability in the nonce-signature function caused a suspension;
• In October, a bug in the centralized Sentry service led to a failure;
• A subsequent outage was caused by a node configuration error;
• In February 2023, the network stopped processing transactions, necessitating a restart, which succeeded only on the second attempt.

“Looking back, we understand that the emergence of a large number of transactions is the main cause of historical network failures, which may be linked to Solana’s mechanism,” commented Hu Zhiwei, president of Boundary Intelligence Research Institute.

Users Note the Routine Nature of the Situation

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko wrote regarding the February incident that “there was some congestion at the time, but everything is resolved now.”

There was some congestion at the time, but everything is resolved now. You can confirm.

— Anatoly Yakovenko (@anatolyakovenko) February 6, 2024

However, some users were less forgiving of yet another outage. One commentator likened the Solana team’s efforts to the failed work of stewards during a sports match, unable to prevent spectators from storming the field.

Solana devs making sure that’s nothing goes wrong with their blockchain

pic.twitter.com/JuW0m5u5YC

— Gordon (@AltcoinGordon) February 6, 2024

Some ironically recalled the narrative of the “Ethereum killer.”

eth maxis when they wake up to solana being down pic.twitter.com/FSn8AhZ7KJ

— margiela (@crypto_margiela) February 6, 2024

In December, Yakovenko urged against reviving such an idea.

Don’t bring back last cycle “eth killer” bs. It’s lame. Pareto efficient technologies can have overlapping features and will compete, but that’s all ok. I don’t see a future where solana thrives and somehow eth dies. I am such a techno optimist that I am certain that…

— toly ?? (@aeyakovenko) December 2, 2023

“Don’t bring back last cycle ‘ETH killer’ nonsense. It’s lame. Pareto efficient technologies can have overlapping features and will compete, but that’s all ok. I don’t see a future where Solana thrives and somehow Ethereum dies. I am such a techno optimist that I am certain that eventually danksharding will have enough bandwidth for all our network’s data,” he wrote, not missing the opportunity to highlight his blockchain’s advantages.

Back in November 2023, Yakovenko shared the story of Solana’s creation and discussed the impact of the FTX collapse on the ecosystem.