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Solana Suffers Outage, Raises Concerns Over Chain’s Future
- Late Tuesday night Australian Time, the Solana blockchain experienced a five-hour outage, its fifth longest and 11th in 24 months.
- The 25-minute period without new blocks caused a temporary 5% drop in SOL price, which later recovered, suggesting limited concern over the network’s reliability.
- Although the price not only recovered but also exceeded its pre-outage level, the crypto community is not so sure about the repeat outages, especially given Solana’s beta status compared to its commercial ventures.
Network Down for Five Hours
Late Tuesday night Australian Time the Solana blockchain suffered a network outage. While in isolation this may not be a huge problem at first glance, Solana has suffered from network issues in the past.
According to developer and analyst crypto_flan, the issue with the blockchain was first noticed when no new blocks appeared for 25 minutes, a major departure from the usual time of less than a second to create a block.
This event was first identified due to the absence of new blocks over a 25-minute period, a significant deviation from its 400-millisecond block time.
crypto_flan
SOL dropped around 5% initially but has since made up for its losses and then gained some, nearing back to the USD $100 (AUD $153) mark at the time of writing.
The swift price recovery may be an indication that the network issue wasn’t widely viewed as a big deal. The network was back up and running after 5 hours, but it also was the fifth longest outage and the 11th in the past 24 months.
It’s All Fine – Or Is It?
Well-known commentator with 411k followers on X, AltcoinGordon, said he heard unconfirmed rumours about the outage but was swiftly corrected by community member CryptoSteve01, who said there was neither a “gloom and doom” scenario for Solana nor any conspiracy.
He quoted a post by Solana developers who had posted that a version upgrade had caused some issues initially and that the Solana team is actively working on the issue.
However, another observer, CaptainOblivious, questioned why nobody in the Solana team seems able to pinpoint these outages.
User 0xSolanaGirl even went so far as to say she will change her name to 0xHederaGirl in response to the outage.
Solana Still a Solid Investment?
In all seriousness though, Solana has received a lot of praise and a fair share of hype, so these outages raise some concerns, despite the market shrugging it off for now.
Founder of CryptoCapitalVenture Dan Gambardello highlighted in a post prior to the outage that the user experience on Solana is no different from other blockchains. He went on to express his respect for Solana and said that tribalism should be ditched as all blockchains have something to offer.
However, there is something to be said for a slow and steady approach like with the Cardano blockchain, which has never seen any outages. Gambardello stressed that for many investors (including himself) the security and decentralisation outweigh development speed – especially if it comes at a cost, as we just saw with Solana.
CoinDesk’s Daniel Kuhn wrote in an opinion piece just hours after the event that Solana should stop claiming to be in beta while also targeting mass adoption, hinting at the Solana phone, meme coin activity and many other large-scale developments.
But there is something disingenuous in saying that a project is a work-in-progress while also actively attempting to on-board the world. Especially if you genuinely believe that crypto assets have real value — otherwise you are unnecessarily putting people at risk.
Daniel Kuhn 
Author
Aaron Feuerstein
Aaron Feuerstein is a freelance writer based in Melbourne. His focus is on decentralised finance and the regulatory space surrounding blockchain. He holds a Master's in Accounting. When he is not studying the latest legal case, he enjoys his time as a modest but eager hobby cook.
