- Solana has denied that a DDoS attack took place last week
- The Solana blockchain slowed dramatically, leading some to conclude the blockchain had been attacked
- This led to criticisms over Solana’s perceived centralization
An argument erupted over the weekend over whether the Solana blockchain went down for the second time, with some saying that a DDoS attack had knocked Solana offline and others arguing that it had slowed down but not stopped and that an attack had not taken place. The problems with the Solana blockchain raised once again the issue of decentralization, with Solana’s accusers saying that the network was centralized and therefore more susceptible to attacks.
Attack “Exposed Fundamental Design Flaws”
The Solana blockchain was described as having slowed to a crawl last on Friday, with problems in transaction validation creating a huge bottleneck. Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons took to Twitter on Friday to claim that Solana had suffered a DDoS attack, which he said “exploited fundamental design flaws which are considered features by SOL”:
1/6) Solana was DDoS attacked again yesterday
This attack exploited fundamental design flaws which are considered features by SOL
As it sacrifices decentralization & security for speed
While ignoring the consequences of that trade off
Specifically Proof of History & Turbine:
— Justin Bons (@Justin_Bons) December 10, 2021
Bons added that Solana “sacrifices decentralization and security for speed”, an argument that was made back in September when Solana experienced a 17-hour outage, which it blamed on a “large increase in transaction load” which caused the network to start forking. Other Twitter users joined the chorus if disapproval, opining that Solana will always be at risk due to its design.
Solana Co-founder Denies DDoS Claims
It didn’t take long for the claims of a DDoS attack to be dismissed however. Solana co-founder tweeted on Saturday that anyone thinking that Solana had gone down on Friday should consider “stepping out of your bubble”, adding that the fear mongering was down to “two people who wanted their 15 minutes of fame” misdiagnosing “slightly slower for a little while” for “crashed and critically flawed”:
if your timeline is telling you that @solana went down yesterday, consider stepping out of your bubble
— Raj Gokal (@rajgokal) December 11, 2021
Tomáš Eminger, Head of Staking and Infrastructure at Rockaway Blockchain Fund, posted a tweet thread explaining what had taken place on the Solana blockchain, adding that “It’s not an DDoS network attack”, adding that it was the fourth time since December 9 that transactions had slowed to 1,000 transactions per second, placing the blame on Raydium bots, which was thought be the reason behind the September crash.
