Solana, a popular blockchain platform, suffered a major network-wide outage over the weekend that left users unable to move tokens or conduct any transactions. The cause of the outage is still under investigation, according to Solana developers.
At approximately 05:46:16 UTC 2023-02-25, Solana Mainnet Beta suffered a significant performance degradation. Eventually leading the validator community to opt for a restart of the network. The cause of this is still unknown and under active investigation.
The developers said in a statement.
The problems started as sluggish transaction processing, but eventually spiraled into a near-complete shutdown of activity on Solana. After a restart by the network’s validators, transactions occurred again, albeit very slowly. The market reaction to the halt remained relatively muted, with Solana’s native tokens (SOL) falling from $23.50 to just over $21 on Saturday night, before erasing all losses from Sunday to Monday.
Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko dismissed theories of increased network voting as a major cause behind the network outage in tweets on Monday evening. “If there was a cheaper way to get votes to all the nodes in the network, then why wouldn’t user transactions also take the cheaper path?” he said.
Despite the outage, Solana has been making headlines recently for a variety of reasons. Google Cloud recently announced that it had joined the Solana validator program, and in 2023, the Solana chain will also receive access to the Blockchain Node Engine from Google Cloud. As part of its credit initiative, Google will grant up to $100,000 in Cloud Credits to selected business owners in the Solana ecosystem.
The news of Google’s partnership with Solana had caused the price of Solana to surge, with the native token (SOL) increasing by 12% following the announcement. This partnership could prove to be a significant boost for Solana, as Google Cloud is one of the most widely used cloud platforms in the world.
Solana’s outage highlights the challenges faced by blockchain platforms, which are still in the early stages of development. However, with major players such as Google Cloud entering the space, the future looks bright for blockchain technology.
In related news, Solana has also announced a partnership with Circle, the US-based payments firm, to create a stablecoin that will be pegged to the US dollar. This move is seen as a significant step forward for Solana, as stablecoins have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their ability to provide a stable store of value for users.
While the recent outage on Solana has caused concern among some users, the platform’s partnerships with major players such as Google Cloud and Circle suggest that it has a bright future ahead. As blockchain technology continues to develop and mature, we can expect to see more exciting developments from Solana and other platforms in the years to come.