Solana Validators Plan Network ‘Restart’ as Outage Continues

Solana developers have decided to restart the network after over seven hours of downtime.

AccessTimeIconSep 14, 2021 at 9:08 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 5:18 p.m. UTC
10 Years of Decentralizing the Future
May 29-31, 2024 - Austin, TexasThe biggest and most established global hub for everything crypto, blockchain and Web3.Register Now

Solana node operators are coordinating a “restart” of the high-speed blockchain Tuesday in an attempt to bring the stuttering network back online.

“The validator community elected to coordinate a restart of the network” and is preparing a “new release” that will right the frozen blockchain, according to an afternoon tweet from the Solana Foundation.

In Solana’s Discord server, developers distributed restart instructions at 3:21 p.m. Eastern time.

The outage began early Tuesday after “resource exhaustion” on the network brought blockchain validation to an hours-long halt. On-chain activity froze across Solana’s multibillion-dollar ecosystem of trading, staking and lending projects.

A source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that the outage “impacts everything built on Solana, but the issue is the underlying [layer 1].”

Tuesday’s outage came amid booming interest in Solana, a network seeking to attract Wall Street usage whose token has been on fire since late August. Investors have flocked to Solana as a low-fee platform for decentralized finance (DeFi).

The disruption was caused by bot trading of Grape Protocol’s Tuesday token offering, founder Anatoly Yakovenko said on Twitter. It is the second time in two weeks that Solana’s mainnet cluster experienced “instability,” according to a Messari research note reviewed by CoinDesk.

A flood of transactions pushed the network past its limits early Tuesday, Solana’s status account tweeted shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern time. The activity triggered a forking that knocked multiple nodes offline. Engineers tried and failed to triage the problem, according to Solana.

It’s not unheard of for blockchain networks to experience service disruptions. Solana’s mainnet is still in beta mode; it last experienced an outage in December, another source said. Last week’s hiccup was also related to a resource exhaustion event.

“It’s good for people to understand that Solana mainnet is still clearly in beta,” said a source building one of Solana’s popular DeFi protocols interrupted by the outage. “I have faith in the Solana core contributors and validators to resolve this issue promptly.”

Engineers were rushing to push a patch to Solana node runners, multiple sources told CoinDesk. Once it’s ready and running across 66% of validators (a supermajority on the network) Solana is expected to come back online.

Until then, the ecosystem with over $11 billion in total value locked (TVL) is in wait-and-see mode. Activity remains frozen at block #96538485.

It is unclear what implications the Tuesday outage may have for Solana. One source in the developer community pointed out that some projects have time-sensitive operations, like liquidations and IDO launches. Those could become thorny the longer the network remains down.

UPDATE (Sept. 14, 19:48 UTC): Adds information on developer response to Solana outage and background material. Changes headline to reflect latest move.

Disclosure

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.

CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. The Bullish group is majority-owned by Block.one; both companies have interests in a variety of blockchain and digital asset businesses and significant holdings of digital assets, including bitcoin. CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive options in the Bullish group as part of their compensation.

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's Managing Editor for Data & Tokens. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL.


Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk's longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.


Read more about