After 4 years since its introduction, Solana has had its highs and lows.
Why has Solana crashed so much if its infrastructure has constantly improved?
There has been much discussion about the latest Solana crash, and it’s worth exploring the reasons. Beyond the fact that these drops have been proven to be temporary in the past, Solana currently has a growing community, and SOL continues to be among the top 5 most chosen cryptocurrencies in the market. A year ago, when we started working with Solana, we explained some of the challenges inherent to the blockchain and began actively working to solve them. However, there have been setbacks. We still can’t ensure there is a single reason for Solana’s volatility, as there have been isolated Solana network outages over the years.
Network Outages and Solutions
A few months ago, a post-mortem report from Solana revealed that the recent network outage, which lasted five hours, was caused by a previously identified bug. This bug, an infinite loop, occurred in the Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation cache, affecting the recompilation of old programs and monopolizing network resources. Validators had to restart the network to solve the issue. This was the sixth major outage since Solana’s launch.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko addressed concerns about network outages, noting that a “long-term fix” was in development. The outages, caused by software bugs and artificial traffic, such as the crash on April 30, were attributed to bots invading popular NFT minting platforms. The solution in this case is being pursued by Jump Crypto and the Solana Foundation. They are working together on a project called Firedancer, which aims to boost Solana’s efficiency. To incentivize developers to find and fix any bugs, they’ve launched a bug bounty program with up to $1 million in rewards. This program, managed by Immunefi, started on July 10, 2024, and runs for 42 days therefore the bug bounty program has 22 days left hence you still have time to participate.
How is this going to solve Solana’s network instability?
By adding a new client, Solana can improve scalability and enhance validation options. A Solana validator client allows nodes to validate transactions and propose new blocks. Using PoS and PoH for transaction synchronization, Solana can process up to 65,000 transactions per second. Firedancer, developed in C++, is a new validator client that enhances processing capacity and supports sharding, which improves blockchain scalability by splitting it into smaller parts, allowing parallel transaction processing, thus boosting speed and efficiency, achieving over 1 million transactions per second in tests.
Reasons for Solana’s Financial Volatility
So, if network instability is not really the problem, how do we explain Solana’s crash?
Recently, Solana’s price has followed the general downward trend of the crypto market. This decline was influenced by external factors in recent months, such as Bitcoin sales by the German government and the repayments from the Mt. Gox exchange, as well as the FTT collapse and turmoil following the FTX exchange. These events have raised market concerns. The BTC drop also affected other cryptocurrencies like ETH and BNB. In fact, the impact on Solana was less than on other cryptocurrencies, and its price continues to recover consistently. Additionally, we have seen support and interest, such as the return of DeGods and yOOts to Solana a few months ago, which appreciated those NFTs. Thus, we can conclude that Solana has experienced significant drops due to both network outages and market variations.
How to Fix These Issues?
As we can see in both the cases of interruptions and the price variations the solution is to get involved, whether by investing or strengthening the ecosystem’s security. The Solana Network has proven to be solid enough, the trend for SOL is upward. In the last month, the price of SOL has shown a significant growth reaching more than $ 180 and representing an increase of more than 26% from the $ 142 at the beginning of the month. This sustained growth added to a previous 20% totaling a 45% increase over the last 90 days is showing so far a fair performance in the cryptocurrency market despite its volatility. So far the community has responded to each problem with real solutions and interesting economic incentives for both developers and various investors. Solana doesn’t seem to need any fixing; it survives on its own.
Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational and educational purposes, based on available data and technical analysis. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions related to cryptocurrencies.
