Solana, a high-performance blockchain known for its fast transaction speeds and low fees, has recently been struggling with network congestion issues that have led to an increase in transaction failures and delays in the launch of several cryptocurrency projects built on the platform. However, the Solana community is actively researching solutions to address these issues and improve the overall performance of the network.
TLDR
- Solana validators voted 98% in favor of the “Timely Voting Credit” proposal to reduce consensus voting latencies and speed up transactions.
- Solana is currently facing network congestion issues due to an implementation bug related to the QUIC protocol, with a fix scheduled for April 15th.
- Congestion has led to increased transaction failures and delayed launches of several of Solana’s cryptocurrency projects.
- Solana’s low fees have made it attractive to arbitrage bots, flooding the network with transactions and causing problems for regular users.
- Solana developers are developing solutions such as consolidating priority fees and reducing reliance on QUIC to alleviate congestion and improve network performance.
One important development in this regard is that Solana validators recently passed the “Timely Voting Credits” proposal, which received an overwhelming 98% of the votes. This proposal aims to reduce the latency of consensus voting, which is important for confirming transactions on the blockchain.
The just-in-time vote credit mechanism is expected to reduce transaction confirmation times and improve network efficiency by encouraging validators to submit votes more quickly.
Solana developers have identified an implementation bug related to the QUIC protocol as the root cause of the ongoing network congestion. QUIC, a data transfer protocol developed by Google, is used by Solana to provide all nodes with information about the current state of the network.
Bug fixes, including a QUIC reconfiguration, are scheduled to be released on April 15th, unless additional issues arise during testing.
The impact of network congestion is felt across various cryptocurrency projects built on Solana, some of which have had to postpone their launches indefinitely.
Staking rewards platform Surge Finance has postponed the launch of its native token, citing the need for improved market conditions to ensure successful transactions. Likewise, real asset platform Sky Hause and identity platform myBID also postponed their launches due to congestion issues.
Solana sees traffic and demand that no other network can keep up with. This is a stress test for the entire system. This is a type of stress test that cannot be modeled in simulation. We’ll have to see how it works in production and adaptation.
Scaling and bug squashing…
— Austin Federa | ??????? (@Austin_Federa) April 6, 2024
One of the factors contributing to Solana’s network congestion is the platform’s popularity among arbitrage bots, who are attracted by its low trading fees. These bots flood the network with transactions in an attempt to profit from price discrepancies of memecoins on various decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
The combination of low, fragmented liquidity and high hype surrounding memecoins like BONK and WIF has further exacerbated the problem, making it difficult for average users to process transactions in a timely manner.
To address this issue, Solana developers are encouraging more app developers to incorporate priority fees, which will help lower the price of some bot activities.
Solana version 1.18, scheduled to launch on mainnet on April 15, is expected to alleviate congestion by revising the way transactions with priority fees are processed. However, the true impact of this update will only be known after it is deployed and tested under real-world conditions.
Solana developers are also working to reduce the network’s dependence on QUIC. Firedancer, Jump Crypto’s proposed verification software, is expected to be the client that facilitates this transition.
By improving Solana’s networking layer and improving the way apps and users communicate with the underlying infrastructure, developers hope to lay the foundation for a more effective overhaul of the fee model in the future.