Developers of Solana have recently introduced a beta update, v1.17.31, for the mainnet to address the persistent network congestion on the Solana blockchain. The update was made available on April 12 and, after three days of testing, it is now recommended for general use by the mainnet beta validators. This patch includes improvements that will alleviate some of the ongoing network congestion, with further enhancements planned for v1.18.
The current version aims to enhance the network congestion and address issues related to the sudden surge in open interest. Some of the notable upgrades include:
– Displaying staked versus non-staked packets sent down/throttled
– Using smallvec to aggregate chunks in quic, resulting in saving one allocation per packet
– Implementing BankingStage Forwarding Filter
– Increasing the minimum streams per 100ms for staked nodes
– Treating super low staked nodes as unstaked in streamer QOS
– Setting the default staked client in LocalCluster
Anza, a Solana developer, advised validators to upgrade to the latest patch only if the delinquent stake is less than 5%. In the context of Solana, delinquency refers to inactive validators, and the percentage refers to the total stake of offline validators. Thus, validators are requested to install the updates only when the percentage of inactive validator stakes on the network is less than 5%.
In the midst of growing network activity and the frenzy surrounding memecoins, the Solana network experienced congestion issues for nearly a week, resulting in a transaction failure rate as high as 75%. While developers were working on resolving the issue, Solana co-founder clarified that the ongoing network congestion problems were merely a bug rather than a fundamental network issue.
The Solana Foundation attributed the current network congestion problems to various factors, including high demand for Solana block space and delayed implementation of patches to address network-related issues. Austin Federa, Solana Foundation’s strategy lead, informed Cointelegraph that developers have been working tirelessly to resolve the issue, but the network demand has surpassed the timely intervention by developers.
However, Solana developers have now created a series of patches to address the ongoing issue, with the first patch released earlier today for developers.