After a technical problem caused a slowdown in users’ ability to conduct on-chain trading, transfer assets, and perform other actions, infrastructure operators on the Solana network swiftly took action to address the issue on Saturday.
At approximately 12:53 am EST, the Solana Discord server reported that the blockchain began “forking,” resulting in conflicting versions of its transaction history. Following this, validators’ RAM usage started to increase while the network’s transaction throughput experienced a significant decline.
The technical issues resulted in a near-complete halt of on-chain activity on the Solana network, with the combined problems causing a significant slowdown in transaction processing. At 2:00 am EST, the network was only able to process around 93 transactions per second (TPS), a sharp decrease from the rate of almost 5,000 TPS recorded just 15 minutes earlier, as reported by the Solana Explorer data site.
Saturday’s incident on the Solana network brought back memories of the chain’s turbulent technical troubles in 2022, which resulted in reforms to how Solana handles inbound traffic. While there was no immediate explanation for the incident, validator operators and network engineers speculated that a bug in the recently launched version of Solana’s code may have been responsible.
According to SolBlaze, a pseudonymous figure who runs a liquid staking pool and is active in developer circles, as there was no definitive explanation for the bug, some validators started downgrading to the previous version in an attempt to restore Solana’s throughput. Later, Solana employees also began endorsing the downgrade.
Two individuals responding to the incident on Saturday suggested that it may take several hours for a supermajority of validators to revert back to the old software in their efforts to restore Solana’s operations, and there is no assurance that it will be successful. In any case, a chain restart was deemed less desirable than a revert.
