Solana survived its record year with no network downtime

Solana’s network had its last period of stalled block production on February 6, 2024. Since then, the chain has had a year of record activity without incidents, the longest period in its history without the loss of consensus. 

Solana’s network has not suffered a problem with its consensus for a period of 12 months, a record in its history. The chain repaired its consensus mechanism between validators, allowing block production to continue even during a year of record transactions and inflows of new users. 

Most of the Solana outages occurred in 2022, where, at one point, they were a monthly event. During those times, SOL had a period of increased volatility. After the April 30, 2022 outage, the network stalled just as SOL erased value from around $100 down to the $50 range in just two weeks. 

Since then, Solana boosted its consensus mechanism and included more Firedancer nodes with a higher transaction capacity. As of January 19, one of the busiest days for Solana, the network had 18 Firedancer validators, potentially increasing the chain’s transaction capacity. The inclusion of the new Firedancer client helped the network avoid delays or network outages, with more nodes expected to upgrade in 2025.

Solana incidents were even rare in 2023, with only one outage in February. As a whole, Solana had only two periods of zero bloc production in the past two years, all happening in February. 

SOL transactions fail despite the flawless node consensus

Consensus between validators and nodes is not all that is needed to make Solana a seamless experience for users. While blocks are being produced, end users often face failed transactions. 

The rush to buy Official Trump (TRUMP) led to a spike in daily active wallets, with over 5M users trying to transact, use DEXs, snipe tokens, and move SOL to their wallets. The rush to the Solana ecosystem also caused an overload for Phantom’s wallet services, crashing during the launch of Melania (MELANIA) tokens. 

The Solana ecosystem also depends on the inclusion of transactions into blocks, which is the main task of the Jito validator and block builder. Even with block consensus, those bottleneck points still exist for Solana and may limit users’ options during times of peak demand. 

Even without a block production outage, Phantom wallet users have reported rising average ping times and failed transactions. Average ping time may give insights into a network’s true load and the potential for failed transactions. 

The other potential for delays may be the availability of SOL on centralized exchanges. Coinbase reported delayed sends for SOL, with users suspicious of a potential lack of reserves. Most new buyers of meme tokens attempted to acquire SOL from Coinbase, as the activity originated from the US market. The sudden demand for the token, whether to pay fees or trade on DEXs, caused significant delays in handling deposits and withdrawals.

As of February 6, Coinbase had resolved its issue with delayed SOL sends, and ping times had returned to normal. 

Previously, reports have surfaced of transactions taking over 6-9 hours, possibly due to low SOL reserves or other technical issues. In the dynamic trading of meme tokens, the withdrawal delays have prevented traders from entering the market on time. 

The network still has over 30% failed transactions

Both during periods of high activity and regular days, Solana still has a high share of failed transactions. For DEX traders, priority fees and bribes are key to ensure block inclusion, leading to record fee generation for JitoSOL. 

On January 19, Solana actually had a record of successful transactions, rising up to 79% as traders took care to see their swaps succeed. The day of the TRUMP launch was the most successful for the network. 

In the past, up to 70% of Solana transactions failed. Since then, users’ behaviors changed, based on new services. Jupiter’s aggregator and improved routing also boost DEX usage with fewer delays. 

Centralized exchanges remain an issue for SOL users, as they can even block withdrawals during days of outsized demand. For now, however, the ecosystem remains robust, with no outages of DEX or apps.

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