Massive Demand and Patch Delays Behind Solana's Network Congestion, Says Foundation's Strategy Lead
Summary:
The Solana Foundation has attributed recent network congestion issues to high demand and delays in applying relevant patches. While Solana's consensus layer is functioning as designed, user experience needs improvement. Austin Federa, the Foundation's strategy leader, admitted to planning shortcomings and described the current situation as a "failure of success" due to massive demand. He indicated that although developers work tirelessly to deliver fixes and test features, network upgrades and demand didn't align. Despite criticisms for occasional outages, Federa maintains that the blockchain industry's goal should be 100% uptime. He also noted that like many other growing networks, Solana carries a beta label.
Recent network congestion problems are being attributed to the soaring demand for Solana block space and delays in applying network stack-related patches, according to the Solana Foundation. Austin Federa, the Foundation's strategy leader, shared these insights with Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week, expressing the challenges in developing Solana's network infrastructure. Federa noted that while Solana's consensus layer continues to function as expected, the network's user experience has room for improvement. Even though the network manages around 700 transactions per second, upgrading the Solana core protocol remains a priority.
Federa acknowledged that the intended network stack component upgrades didn't align with the high demand on Solana's network, and this caused some "bottleneck" issues. He described the situation as a "failure of success" due to the massive demand for Solana block space and network transactions. To put this into perspective, Solana is handling more transactions than combined Ethereum's layer-1 and layer-2s.
Federa also admitted to shortcomings in planning and executing the network upgrades, stating that developers could have anticipated such demand based on previous usage statistics. A recent implementation bug led to a surge in Solana's transaction failure rate. Despite developers' tireless efforts in preparing fixes and testing features, they couldn't prevent the network downtimes.
Over the past two years, Solana has received criticism for intermittent network outages, but it's not the only one. Ethereum layer-2s such as Base, Arbitrum, and Starknet have also experienced similar issues. Federa pointed out that blockchain networks are currently growing rapidly, much like Amazon Web Services did in its early days. Despite this, he agrees that the industry's goal should be 100 % uptime.
He also noted that many ongoing network issues are due to the industry's constant growth and development, which is why Solana still carries a beta label. Solana issued v1.17.31 for general use by mainnet validators on April 15, an upgrade anticipated to relieve some of the existing network congestion.
Published At
4/15/2024 11:15:06 AM
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