The Solana network is struggling this afternoon after a major network outage. After a relatively calm month for the layer-1 network, June is starting off on shaky ground. Today saw the entire chain grinding to a halt. The Solana outage isn’t just affecting the usability of the network, either; it’s also causing strife for the SOL crypto as it descends on the news.
Solana is a network known for its scalability. Indeed, developers assert that theoretically, Solana could handle up to 65,000 transactions per second. Of course, this would make Solana one of the highest-scaling networks in the world. It is far better-performing than Ethereum’s (ETH-USD) throughput of just a few dozens transactions per second, on average. Typically, the Solana network only needs to validate around 1,000 transactions per second.
Usually, the network can take on these transactions with ease. However, Solana also has a penchant for outages that can quickly halt the network. Last year, the network suffered several outages. One outage, last September, took the chain offline for nearly a full day, costing users dearly as SOL crypto prices plunged.
In 2022, this issue has only grown, perhaps even worse than before. Through the end of May, Solana had seen seven total outages in 2022. Most recently, a flood of bot activity on the network caused a halt that lasted seven hours; that instance directly preceded a steep decline in SOL crypto prices, seeing the token drop from $88 to just $40 in a few days’ time. Of course, the coin was also affected at the tail end of this plunge by the Terra Classic (LUNC-USD) collapse that swept across the whole market.
Solana Outage Marks Eighth in 2022
Today, investors are seeing yet another Solana outage, making for the eighth of the year so far. The outage had begun early in the afternoon, and after about two hours, on-chain activity is still halted.
The reason for today’s outage so far has not been explained by developers. Solana’s official Twitter account has not yet acknowledged the outage. A second account dedicated to documenting changes to the network status has made one post on the matter thus far. While it doesn’t explain the reason behind today’s halt, it advises validators to stand by in anticipation of a restart on the main network.
Regardless of the reasons behind the outage, investors are not going to be happy with SOL crypto price movements in the wake of the news. So far today, the coin has about 10% off its price.
On the date of publication, Brenden Rearick did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
