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Infrastructure operators on the Solana network rushed to right the struggling blockchain early Saturday after a tech issue throttled users’ ability to trade crypto, transfer assets, or do anything on-chain.
The blockchain started “forking” (creating conflicting versions of its transaction history) at around 00:53 New York time, according to Solana’s Discord server. Shortly after that validators’ RAM began increasing while the chain’s transaction throughput fell off a cliff.
Those tech troubles combined to effectively freeze nearly all on-chain activity on the Solana network. By 02:00, the network was processing about 93 transactions per second (TPS), well below the rate near 5000 TPS some 15 minutes prior, according to the data site Solana Explorer.
It was a crisis reminiscent of the chain’s rocky tech incidents in 2022, when a series of halts and slowdowns prompted reforms to how Solana manages inbound traffic. Saturday’s incident had no immediate culprit, though validator operators and network engineers suspected a bug in the new version of Solana code that had come online hours before.
Without a definite bug to squash, some validators began downgrading to the previous version in hopes of reviving Solana’s throughput, said the pseudonymous SolBlaze, who runs a liquid staking pool and is active in developer circles. Later, Solana employees began advocating for the downgrade, too.
Within hours a supermajority of validators had switched back to the old software in their attempt to restore Solana’s operations. But it did little to solve the still unknown problem that was weighing down performance. The effort then turned to a more drastic solution: restarting the chain to the point immediately prior to the forking.
“Coordinating a restart attempt means that the chain will be offline completely, which is always the last resort,” SolBlaze said.
UPDATE: [4:09 UTC] Added details.
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On Tuesday, the relatively new Solana Network, a blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, experienced a “forking” incident that has caused significant disruption to its operations. The incident has slowed or halted on-chain trading, causing a large drop in user activity.
Solana is a layer-1 blockchain protocol designed to bring scalability and speed to smart contract and decentralized finance applications. It was launched in March 2020, and since then has grown quickly in popularity due to its high transaction throughput and its focus on scalability.
The incident that affected Solana on Tuesday was caused by a code bug, which caused the blockchain’s consensus mechanism to diverge, leaving nodes on different branches of the consensus. This is referred to as a “forking” incident, and it can cause huge disruptions to any blockchain-based system.
In response to the incident, the Solana team has already implemented a fix and the network is slowly starting to recover. Meanwhile, the project’s developers are still investigating the cause of the bug.
These types of incidents are relatively common on blockchain networks, particularly when dealing with newer protocols such as Solana. While they can cause significant disruption, they also provide important lessons for project developers and are an important part of any network’s learning curve.
The issue with Solana has caused a large drop in user activity, as well as disruption to on-chain trading. Despite this, the project’s developers remain confident that the quick response to the incident and the subsequent recovery is a sign of the network’s maturity.
While this incident was certainly a setback for Solana, it is also a reminder of the importance of continued development and careful testing of any blockchain protocol. As the network continues to mature and its developers are able to learn from incidents such as this, Solana should be able to go from strength to strength.
