Key Takeaways
- A processing snag on the Solana blockchain’s Mainnet Beta caused the network to crash for hours
- The blockchain has experienced a simmilar problem on September 2
- The intermittent instablility on Tuesday caused the price of SOL to temporarily nosedive 16%
YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) — Etherum killer Solana blockchain crashed and had to be restarted after another intermittent instability caused the network to go offline.
Less than a week after the network’s native token SOL’s bull-run to its all-time high of $213.47, Solana’s Mainnet Beta experienced a processing snag on Tuesday. This rendered the network unable to validate transactions, creating panic among blockchain users.
As the network announced the news on Twitter, panic selling caused the price to nosedive temporarily.
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The issue with Solana
Despite the impressive performance, Solana has faced other performance issues in recent weeks.
On Sep. 2, Solana Status posted a similar message on Twitter about “intermittent instability” on the network.
While the company then reportedly resolved the issue after an hour, the snag on Tuesday lasted much longer.
Hours after announcing the incident with their initial tweet, Solana Status explained in a subsequent update that a large increase in transaction load to 400,000 per second had overwhelmed the network.
The issue caused a denial of service on the Mainnet Beta.
Solana-powered DeFi and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) wallet service Phantom also confirmed the news. According to the wallet’s Twitter handle, applications on the blockchain had to deal with instability and connectivity issues owing to the technical issue.
The wallet has not issued a subsequent update after that.
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Solana (SOL) sheds value
Solana saw a quick price drop following the incident, shedding as much as -16% in the process. SOL, which was trading roughly at $171 when the news broke out, quickly plummeted to as low as $142.
The drop resulted in an over -30% dip from its ATH attained last week, although the price has recovered considerably since then.
The incident caused analysts to weigh in on the matter.
Forbes quoted John Iadeluca, Founder & CEO of multi-strategy fund Banz Capital, who gave his opinion on the dip in Solana prices.
“I would say Solana’s price drop was a combined result of widespread market profit-taking due to its mainnet crashing today,”
he stated.
CEO of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko also stepped in to update fans of the predicament.
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Is Solana too Centralized?
Some users couldn’t hold their anger after Solana’s announcement about the snag, criticizing the blockchain’s centralized nature.
“This is clearly insider manipulation. Not a single asset in the world would behave like that after someone says “unable to solve”. Very fishy”
one user wrote on Twitter.
With the network unable to process any blocks for hours, blockchain users struggled to figure out what took so long.
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Mainnet restart complete
After struggling to fix the issue for hours, the network announced that they might restart the Mainnet to solve the problem.
A restart of the blockchain means that validators will revert to an earlier copy of the blockchain in an attempt to restore and fix it.
“Resource exhaustion in the network is causing a denial of service, engineers are working towards a resolution. Validators are preparing for a potential restart if necessary”
the network tweeted.
Hours later, Solana issued another tweet, announcing that the restart was complete.
Data on SolScan showed that the network had started producing blocks again. At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $163.92, up from the $142 mark it fell because of the issue.
Although Solana is up and running, it will take time before the network is fully restored and users access their staked tokens and transaction history.
