Solana’s slowdown: Exec reveals what’s clogging the network

• Solana faced a surge in transaction failures, prompting worries regarding its network activity.
• Experts emphasized that Solana’s underlying protocol remains highly efficient.

Solana [SOL], recently faced a surge in transaction failures, raising concerns about its ability to handle increased network activity. This development sparked debates within the community about Solana’s future as a leading blockchain platform.

Shedding light on the network’s congestion, Austin Federa, Head of communications for Solana Labs in an X (formerly Twitter) post noted,

“Developers from Anza, Firedancer, Jito, and other core contributors are working diligently (and not sleeping much) to shore up Solana’s networking stack to meet the unprecedented demand the network is seeing today.”

What caused this congestion?

Amidst numerous discussions and debates surrounding the cause of the extreme congestion, there’s a shared understanding at a basic level – the current software system is unable to handle the overwhelming traffic volume.

As efforts are underway to address this issue, the fundamental question arises: How did this situation arise in the first place?

In response to this Federa added,

“This was, to some extent, a known bottleneck in the implementation of QUIC used on the Agave validator client and was on the roadmap to be addressed.”

It means that while Solana utilizes the QUIC networking protocol, the current implementation has deficiencies and bugs. However, these issues do not necessarily indicate a fundamental design flaw in Solana itself.

Clearing the air around QUIC, Richard Patel, a developer at Firedancer Solana, added,

“QUIC is not inherently vulnerable DDoS (it still sucks).”

In SOL’s defense, Matt Sorg, Solana’s Tech and Product Lead in his blog post noted,

“Solana is a highly efficient protocol that hasn’t nearly hit its scaling ceiling. This particular issue doesn’t hit the transaction processing part of the protocol and isn’t an issue of failed transactions.”

Adding to the fray, Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Helius Lab, elaborated,

“Solana’s current issue is not a design flaw, it’s an implementation bug.”

Will Solana stand the test of time?

Despite a subsequent decrease in transaction failure rates, concerns persist about the network’s capability to handle surges in demand.

Remarking on the same, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, noted,

“Dealing with congestion bugs sucks so much more than total liveness failure. the latter is one and done, bug is identified and patched and chain continues. the former has to go through the full release and test pipeline. shipping fast is impossible.”

Amidst these drawbacks, SOL at the time of writing slipped by 6.16% in just one day indicating strong selling pressure.

Despite the spread of FUD, Santiment’s social trend data highlights optimism among Solana supporters, with approximately 54% expressing bullish views on SOL.

These enthusiasts believe that Solana’s advantages in terms of lower fees and faster transaction speeds compared to Ethereum will ultimately position Solana favorably in the market.