Solana ($SOL) Mainnet is Back Online, Here’s What Happened?

Solana ($SOL) network’s bullish momentum came to an abrupt halt after the mainnet beta experienced a transaction glitch. The glitch led to very high transaction frequency up to 400,000 transactions per second. These transactions flooded the transaction queue but the absence of prioritization of network-critical messaging led a to fork in the network which in turn consumed a ton of memory on the network.

Several nodes of the blockchain went offline due to excessive memory use and the network remained inactive for more than 10-hours. The developer team claimed they have been working to bring the network online as soon as possible.

1/ Solana Mainnet Beta encountered a large increase in transaction load which peaked at 400,000 TPS. These transactions flooded the transaction processing queue, and lack of prioritization of network-critical messaging caused the network to start forking.

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 14, 2021

The transaction bug at the peak of Solana’s bull run has dampened its chances of extending its bull run to new highs. Many even highlighted that the network was quite centralized as someone pointed out last week that it would take only 20 validators to come together and shut down the network.

OK, I spent much of today looking for decentralization in @solana and I seriously can't find any.

20 validators could collude to shut down the network right now, according to @solanabeach_io.

That's not unstoppable, that's not autonomous, that's not censorship-resistant. pic.twitter.com/kjeY0on5AP

— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) September 9, 2021

Solana ($SOL) Network Restarts

Solana ($SOL) became the biggest success story post-May market crash as the altcoin managed to see a nearly 7X increase in price since August. $SOL entered price discovery mode after breaching the $100 mark and defied all market trends to post a new ATH of $215. The altcoin became one of the fastest-growing ecosystems and joined the NFT frenzy with its Degenerate Ape NFTs. However, the current mainent glitch that has kept the network offline for more than 10-hours could bring doom to the progress and gains of Solana over the past couple of months.

The developers have managed to patch the glitch and the network is up and running again. The status update noted that Dapps, block explorers, and the supporting system will be back online within few hours and full functionality will be restored.

The Solana validator community successfully completed a restart of Mainnet Beta after an upgrade to 1.6.25. Dapps, block explorers, and supporting systems will recover over the next several hours, at which point full functionality should be restored.

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 15, 2021

The price of the altcoin also seems to be recovering as it rose above $160 and currently trading at $164.3 after falling to a new daily low of $143.5.