Tackling Network Congestion Challenges: Solana Developers Take Action

The Solana Foundation has attributed recent issues with network congestion to a combination of high demand for Solana block space and a failure to implement patches related to its networking stack in a timely manner. In an interview with Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week, Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Federa discussed efforts to address these problems. Federa explained that the goal of the Solana project is to create the world’s fastest network that is open, permissionless, and decentralized, but sometimes the team of engineers working on building the network doesn’t get it right. While Solana’s consensus layer is still operating as intended, there is recognition that the network is not meeting expectations in terms of user experience. Federa acknowledged that the network is currently processing around 700 transactions per second, which is commendable but still requires work on the core protocol. Developers are planning fixes for bottleneck issues in a specific component of the networking stack implementation. However, there was a misalignment between the roadmap for implementing upgrades and the expected demand on the Solana network. Federa admitted that a less generous interpretation of the situation could suggest a failure to plan and implement network upgrades effectively. He also noted that ecosystem developers may have been able to anticipate the demand spikes based on the network’s past usage. Solana has faced criticism for network outages in the past, but Federa pointed out that other protocols, such as Ethereum layer-2s, have also experienced issues recently. He compared the development of blockchain networks to the early days of Amazon Web Services, which also had outages, emphasizing that the industry is still growing and evolving. That’s why Solana operates under a beta label, as the network today does not represent its final form. Solana recently released version 1.17.31, which includes enhancements aimed at reducing congestion on the network.