Ore, the project with a token mined akin to bitcoin, has announced the pause of all mining activities on the Solana network in response to network congestion issues it exacerbated.
In a statement posted by @HardhatChad on X, the pseudonymous designer of the Ore project, it was announced, “I have decided to pause all mining, effective immediately. I believe this action to be in the best interests of Solana, Ore holders, and the fastest path forward to v2.”
Since its launch approximately two weeks ago, the Ore project gained significant attention from the Solana community, leading to a surge in mining activities. However, this rapid rise in interest and mining activities contributed to increased transactions on the Solana network, exacerbating congestion issues.
Simultaneously, Solana was grappling with congestion caused by increased transactions initiated by bots and newly released memecoins. This surge in demand for block space resulted in network slowdowns, prompting Solana to release a patch update to alleviate congestion.
“Ore launched just two weeks ago as an experimental hackathon project,” stated @HardhatChad on X. “Since then, it has grown to become the most used program on Solana by transaction count, and generated a greater peak load of mainnet network traffic than any smart contract in blockchain history.”
With Ore, miners solve cryptographic puzzles to secure the network and earn crypto rewards. However, due to recent difficulties, @HardhatChad emphasized the need for a new contract design, leading to the decision to pause mining activities.
“The recent difficulty updates have shown conclusively that a new contract design is needed,” @HardhatChad added. “By pausing now, I will gain much-needed time to study the data, organize a team, and focus our energies on getting v2 right.”
@HardhatChad also mentioned on X spaces that v2 is expected to be ready in a “handful of weeks.”