Solana network faces another 20 hours outage, Details inside

Solana is a high-performance blockchain designed for decentralized applications and smart contracts. While it gained popularity due to its high processing speed and low transaction fees, it has faced numerous technical and processing problems since its debut in 2020.

Last year, in October, the blockchain faced a similar issue when a glitch caused a prolonged outage. Similarly, on September 14, 2021, the Solana blockchain faced
a 17-hour long outage due to transaction processing issues as a number of transactions were submitted to the blockchain, overwhelming its ability to process them.

Solana downfall

The consequences of growing skepticism Solana have been dire. Once traded at $260, Solana has seen as low as $10 losing 91% of its value, and currently trading at $22.

Originally created as a competitor of the Ethereum blockchain, Solana has faced many ups and downs since 2020.

Already facing numerous issues and continuous skepticism, Solana accelerated its decline when a major backer and investor, Sam Bankman-Fried, got arrested for illegal political funding leading to the collapse of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, and Almaeda Research.
Solana's latest decline came on December 25 when two of the blockchain’s most valuable NFTs, Degods and YOOts, left the blockchain. Degods will be bridged to the Ethereum blockchain, and YOOts will be moved to the Polygon network next year.

Solana faces 20-hour outage

The Solana network faced the worst outage this weekend. All the transactions on the blockchain were halted or delayed and users were unable to trade or transfer assets due to a breakdown caused by network slowdown and technical problems.
The problem occurred when the upgrade sent the blockchain under the so-called “Vote only” mode, leading to the blockage of all the transactions on the blockchain. The validator tried to restart the network after all the transactions got blocked. At one time known as one of the fastest blockchains, Solana was processing only 93 TPS.
According to Austin Freda, Head of strategy and communication, the blockchain was not able to recover itself, leading to a complete restart of the network.
The “Solana Status” Twitter account announced that the problem occurred during an upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 that substantially "slowed block finalization".

Community Reactions

Solana had to face fierce reactions on social media from crypto communities arguing that the continuous outage issue could be due to some serious design flaws in the blockchain. One of the users tweeted that it was a surprise that Solana made it to the top 10 cryptocurrencies while having such technical issues.

Another user pointed out that the on-chain consensus model of Solana involves the communications of validators and transactions that “inflates the transaction volume as well as TPS”.

Conclusion

Solana claims to be the fastest blockchain with the lowest transaction fees, but it has faced numerous challenges which have made its price crumble along with its reputation. However, if Solana tries to attract new users and overcomes its technical difficulties, it is possible that its value could recover or even surpass its previous highs in the next bull run.