Solana Once Again Experiences A Network Outage

Solana (SOL) experienced its first network outage of 2024 during the early New York trading session on February 6th. The blackout on its mainnet network, which is still in beta, had a significant impact on leveraged traders and other users. The network remained offline amid a request for validators to install the new software update before rebooting the system. Following a 5-hour disruption, the Solana network is now operational again.

Solana engineers are investigating the outage and have opted for a new release of validator software to address the issue that halted the cluster. At the time of the initial report, the network was still inactive, with a request for validators to install the new software update before restarting the network. This led to a temporary halt in block progression and validation on the network.

Damage Control

The network delay led various exchanges and services reliant on SOL to suspend operations. Allegedly, the outage affected SOL and tokens within its broader ecosystem, such as Jupiter (JUP) and BONK. Some exchanges, like CoinEx, notified users of SOL service suspensions due to network issues. The network instability also impacted the price of SOL before stabilizing a few minutes later. Notably, the price hit $92.88 before a slight rebound following assurance of resolving the network issues.

During the same network blackout period, leveraged SOL traders, particularly those with long positions, faced significant liquidation. According to Coinglass data, $1.36 million worth of long positions were liquidated within the first hour of the network outage.

Unresolved Network Issues

Despite the network outage, the aforementioned price rebound represented notable stability during the first network outage for Solana in 2024. Previous downtimes have impacted sentiment, influencing price movements. However, the recurrence of these network issues is concerning. Since its launch in March 2020, Solana has experienced multiple outages, prompting core developers and engineers to restart it several times.

Additionally, Solana gained prominence due to high traction via its native token, SOL, and the promise of faster and cheaper transactions compared to Ethereum. Despite being hailed as an Ethereum killer, frequent network outages have forced many to rethink their opinions as to whether Solana can remain as a serious competitor alongside Cardano, Polygon, and others.