The Recent Challenges Faced by Solana Network
Recent concerns have arisen regarding the Solana network’s performance, particularly due to the consistent high failure rates of non-vote transactions, which have persisted for two consecutive days.
On April 5th, approximately 75.7% of transactions involving the transfer of native SOLs between smart contracts failed, an increase from 75.5% the day prior, as highlighted by analyses from CryptoCrypto using a Dune dashboard. At one point, the failure rate even surpassed 77%, as noted by a user.
A deeper inspection revealed a significant rise in failure rates over the past month, coinciding with a surge in on-chain activity within the Solana ecosystem.
Response and Efforts to Address the Issue
Amid growing concerns, Anza, a development group focused on Solana comprised of former core engineers from Solana Labs, announced ongoing testing of a patch to alleviate network congestion. They reported making “substantial” progress, with potential fixes anticipated for implementation in the upcoming week.
The discourse surrounding the highlighted graph has become a point of contention between impartial observers and certain developers within the Solana community, with some discrediting it as an accurate representation of the network’s performance.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, a platform for Solana-based developers, suggested that the majority of failed transactions were a result of bot activity.
Decline in User Activity
As a consequence, there has been a gradual decrease in Solana’s daily active user count, reflected in the analysis of Token Terminal data by CryptoCrypto. The reduced user engagement has also led to a decline in fee generation on the network.
Despite these challenges, SOL remained relatively stable in the past 24 hours, showcasing a 2.45% increase. However, on the weekly chart, the altcoin displayed significant losses.
Notably, Fantom blockchain’s co-founder, Andre Cronje, expressed support for the Solana ecosystem, characterizing the current congestion as an engineering obstacle rather than a critical failure.