Solana took center stage. DeFi In recent weeks the world meme coin And the Verge token is: worm-hole, JupiterAnd Tensor drives decentralized exchange trading volume on chain. March record high. But now it appears the network is becoming a victim of its own success.
As demand grows, congestion on the chain is causing transactions to fail and making even basic tasks difficult to perform. As Head of Protocol Engineering at the Helium Foundation I put it in recently, “Solana is terrible to use right now.” And he’s not the only Solana Maxi to voice these frustrations publicly.
After weeks of frustration and increasing tweet threads. Solana With builders blaming specific apps and startups, a clear cause was revealed. And the fix, or at least part of it, could be right around the corner.
Solana Foundation Strategy Director Austin Federa tweeted a summary Commenting on the situation on Wednesday, the problem is QUIC Protocol This could be due to a known problem that suddenly became much worse due to “unprecedented demand.”
“What was unexpected was the speed at which demand for Solana grew, shifting ports from ‘adequate but needs improvement’ to ‘inadequate’ in a matter of days,” he wrote. “Charity reading is a ‘failure to succeed’, also known as a ‘failure to plan’. Simply put, this is technical debt.”
Federa said the issue, which developers recently discussed on Twitter, is included in the roadmap for resolution. But he wrote that the foundation is devoting more resources to “important new work,” including: Upcoming Firedancer ClientThis aims to make Solana more robust following past instances of crashes and downtime.
“Every decision is a series of compromises,” he added. “Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong. “This is no different from what the Solana network experienced in early 2022, when demand exceeded the capacity of many systems.”
The Solana Foundation is working with developers across the ecosystem, including Anza, a developer spun off from Solana Labs in January, as well as the Firedancer team and infrastructure company Jito. The fix to Solana’s Anza Agave validator client is expected around April 15 and could help alleviate congestion.
Anza engineer Rex St. John Shared a screenshot Here’s an excerpt from Solana Explorer on Wednesday afternoon depicting the network’s significantly improved ping times. “A preview of upcoming attractions,” he wrote. “Don’t get excited yet. “This is just a test of what becomes more prevalent when cooked.”
decryption We reached out to the Solana Foundation early Wednesday for more details about the hours and the work being done on the network, but did not hear back by press time.
While the data shows an increase in trading demand for Solana, some members of the community have pointed out other causes that could be making the problem worse.
For example, the new project Ore is Bitcoin-like mining experience However, this ultimately puts more strain on the network. Elsewhere, renowned builder Mert Mumtaz is co-founder and CEO of an infrastructure startup. Helius Labs—And others claimed that some of Solana’s infrastructure companies were exploiting the bug for profit.
“Imagine being aware of bugs in the mainnet as an infrastructure provider.” Mumtaz tweeted. “And instead of helping patch it, they exploit it for profit and ruin everyone’s UX and brag about it. embarrassing.”
There may not be a single cause for the demand that is currently hindering Solana network performance, but the root cause is known. And the developers appear to be working hard to test and deploy fixes that will likely improve things in the future.
“It will take some time, but we will get there,” Federa said on Twitter.
Editor Guillermo Jimenez
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