Solana's latest release may have THIS effect on SOL's price

Solana-based devshop Anza claimed that the internal tests have been “promising”
SOL failed to react positively, slipping by more than 4% on the charts

In what is a major breakthrough, Solana’s keenly awaited version v1.18.12, aimed at tackling ongoing congestion issues on the network, has now been released for testing.

Long-lasting solution?

Anza, a Solana-focused devshop constituted by former core engineers from Solana Labs, has urged users to switch to the new version and evaluate its reliability on the testnet. Anza claimed that the new release would improve network performance by increasing fee collection and reducing conflicting transactions. While the internal tests yielded positive results, Anza added a caveat that the improvements would be fully validated only after they are put into production.

Solana has been facing mounting criticism over its congestion and high failure rates of its transactions lately. According to AMBCrypto’s analysis of a Dune dashboard, about 63% of all non-vote transactions failed as on 27 April. The failure rate had peaked at 75% earlier this month.

Solana developers have been shipping fixes and releases in recent weeks to alleviate the pain. The latest release v1.18.12 is meant to provide further enhancements as part of these efforts.

SOL remains in bears’ clutches

SOL failed to move up on the back of this development. Instead, it dropped by 4.66% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. In fact, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency bled by more than 27% over the month, aligning it with the broader market’s downturn.

FUD remained as critical as ever, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly negative discourse around the altcoin, AMBCrypto found using Santiment’s data.

Source: Santiment

Realistic or not, here’s SOL’s market cap in BTC’s terms

Finally, the number of traders taking bearish bets on SOL rose over the last 24 hours, surpassing those longing the asset significantly, according to Coinglass data.

This suggested that network issues are still playing on the minds of many market participants.