Solana Network Hit by a Major Slowdown Causing a ‘Forking Event’

‘‘The Solana network is experiencing a non-standard behavior (fork). Our engineers are investigating the issue and how best to help,’’ one of the developers, Chorus One, posted on Twitter. The solutions the devs are discussing in attempts to reboot the platform include downgrading the network or a total restart. Per one user by the pseudonym SolBlaze, most of the network’s validators had switched to the older version of the blockchain to address the increased memory usage brought about by the technical glitch.

The incident, which occurred at 1 a.m. ET, caused a forking event, where a blockchain replicates conflicting versions of its transaction history. From the data on Solana Explorer, the technical issue led to a significant plunge of the network’s throughput from 5,000 TPS to roughly 93 TPS. Solana developers reported that they are yet to fully diagnose what led to the disruption.

One of the suspected causes relates to a bug in a recently released version of Solana code that was launched just before the ‘forking’’ incident. The network engineers have also published instructions on the network’s Discord Channel to help the validators navigate the technical problems.

Outages a ‘curse’ to Solana, says co-founder

Network outages have been a thorny issue in the self-proclaimed ‘‘Ethereum Killer,’’ besides its association with the collapsed exchange FTX. Last year, the blockchain’s co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko admitted in an interview with Real Vision’s host, Raoul Pal, that the outages, which were reported at seven within the twelve months up to September last year, were a ‘curse to the network.’’

It contradicts the very Vision of the three-year blockchain built for high transaction speed at cheaper gas fees and powered by a hybrid proof of History (PoH) and the proof of stake (PoS) consensus. Consequently, the price of Solana’s native token SOL has lost over 90% of its value since its all-time high. At press time, the utility token traded for $22, representing a change of -1.6% and -4.6% in the past day and month.