The Solana network experienced a fork event early on February 25th that restricted users from transacting. Validators restarted the network the same day. While the first attempt failed, users are still unable to transact and speculation is growing as to why the network is down.
Solana network restarted for the second time
The SOL network experienced outage issues during the network upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 on February 25. The Solana network outage continued on Saturday as validators prepare for a second reboot attempt where users hope transactions will become active. Earlier today, the validators running Solana’s infrastructure concluded that the best way to fix the blockchain would be to sync and fork the reboot again. This attempt was abandoned when the validators realized that they had chosen the wrong point to start over in the first round, further prolonging the delay.
Solana validators and developers said that what started as heavy transaction processing has turned into an almost complete shutdown of activities on Solana. Blockchain block production has been stopped and transactions are not being processed or verified.
A coordinated restart is underway to address an issue during the upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 that caused block finalization to slow significantly.
Validators: please follow instructions below https://t.co/L7b3kAFOJS
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 25, 2023
The second attempt means users will not be able to trade for a while. On-chain crypto assets cannot be moved, frozen in place until critical backend infrastructure is back online.
Speculation grows
Hours after the crisis began, key voices in the Solana ecosystem were still trying to find a culprit. One of the leading theories was that a “fat block” was clogging the mechanics of the Blockchain. Specifically, the network was upgrading to an upgraded version shortly before its problems started.
For the day, validators working with the developers at Solana Labs were trying to reboot the network and had taken about 70% of the total stake behind the move. The network needs a supermajority of 80% to move forward. The key to the reboot is holding a large amount of shares on major CEX platforms such as Coinbase and Binance.
— init (@0x_init) February 25, 2023
The Solana Status Twitter page, which provides information on the current state of the SOL network, includes a document link that provides validators with instructions on how to proceed with the reboot. Essentially, the verifiers needed to take a snapshot on slot 179526408, change the verifier command lines, install the previous version 1.13.6, then restart the verifier. Solana’s recent issues are reminiscent of the problems Blockchain faced last year, including multiple block production cuts.
Solana network in the spotlight with network outages through 2022
Solana suffered five network outages last year where it became unusable. A four-and-a-half-hour outage in June resulted in a 12% drop in SOL price. The recent outage did not cause any obvious selling pressure on SOL. SOL is trading above $22.5 at the time of writing, slightly bearish in company with the overall market.
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