Solana Faces Second Network Congestion in Two Days, Anza Issues Fix

The Solana blockchain has been undergoing some major challenges and network congestion issues in the past two days. As per data from Phantom the Solana blockchain has been currently experiencing congestion for the second time in the last 48 hours which could lead to transaction delay or failure.

What’s Leading to the Solana Network Congestion?

The recent congestion in Solana has been in Anza Network’s validator client implementation, Agave. In its recent post, Anza explains that the primary concern regarding network congestion has been identified to stem from a QUIC implementation and the behavior of the Agave validator client.

This issue has prompted Anza engineers, in collaboration with other core contributors, to undertake extensive efforts to diagnose and address bottlenecks while enhancing overall network performance.

Working diligently, they have also been striving to implement necessary improvements and modifications to alleviate congestion and enhance user experience.

Anza said that it would start releasing fixes next week onwards. Moreover, expectations are high for further enhancements and changes and their implementation over the course of the coming months, signaling a proactive approach to bolstering Solana’s network efficiency.

1/ Timelines and what to expect around what @anza_xyz is doing to address the current network congestion on @Solana in our validator client implementation, Agave.

The short version is: significant progress has been made to overcome the current congestion challenges, and we…

— Anza (@anza_xyz) April 5, 2024

The Failure of Non-Vote Transactions

On Thursday, April 4, the Solana blockchain witnessed a concerning trend as a staggering 75% of all non-vote transactions encountered failure. This occurrence also coincided with a notable surge in network activity, primarily propelled by the increasing popularity of meme coins on the platform.

The recent development has ignited intense debate within the Solana community, with numerous users expressing their frustrations over the deteriorating user experience.

Amid the unfolding crisis, Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius and a prominent advocate for Solana, stepped forward to address the mounting concerns. Mumtaz argued that attributing the 75% transaction failure rate solely to network instability may be misleading. He further asserted that the majority of these failures were due to “bot spam” rather than genuine user transactions encountering obstacles.

The recent network congestion issues have also put downward pressure on Solana. Over the last week, the SOL price is down by 10% currently trading around $175.