- The Solana blockchain experienced a five-hour outage on Tuesday, requiring a reboot to resume operations
- The SOL token briefly fell from $96 to below $94 during the incident but recovered as the blockchain synchronized hours after the issues arose
- This outage is the latest in a line of disruptions, raising concerns about Solana’s reliability and inviting further criticism of the project
The Solana blockchain encountered a significant outage lasting approximately five hours on Tuesday, with the network requiring a reboot to get it going again. The outage temporarily impacted the value of the SOL token value, which dropped from about $96 to below $94 during the incident, but the price recovered when the blockchain was back synchronizing again. This is far from the first time that the Solana network has ceased functioning, and the incident led to more criticisms of the project’s reliability.
Validator Upgrade was Rushed Out
The disruption to the Solana network began just before 10:00 UTC yesterday, with normal processing resuming around 15:00 UTC. At around 10:50, network validator @mtromp revealed in an X post that the problem had been identified:
Core engineers have identified a fix and are building a new version for Validators to upgrade. More details after testing is complete.
— marty | superfast (@mtromp) February 6, 2024
Validators began generating snapshots from local ledger data to facilitate a network restart, while the Solana Foundation, responsible for maintaining the network, prepared a new validator software release containing a patch addressing the root cause of the outage.
Node operators received notices via Solana’s Discord channel, emphasizing the necessity of upgrading to the latest software to maintain delegation status, ensuring network security and operator rewards. By 15:00 the blockchain was processing transactions again.
Not the First Time
This outage, ranking as the fifth longest in Solana’s history, and marking the eleventh in the past two years, has raised concerns among users and investors regarding the network’s reliability. Such issues have not affected the optimism among supporters, however, which has been reflected in the SOL token’s performance since FTX collapsed in November 2022; since then, SOL has surged by over 600%.
Solana’s engineering team is working on a root cause report, promising transparency regarding the incident’s details upon completion.
