Solana developers have unveiled a new update, v1.17.31, for the mainnet beta in order to address the persistent network congestion plaguing the Solana blockchain. After three days of thorough testing, the update is now recommended for general use by mainnet beta validators. This patch includes several enhancements that will alleviate some of the ongoing network congestion, with further improvements planned for v1.18.
The current version of the update will help to mitigate the network congestion and address issues with the sudden surge in open interest. Some of the notable upgrades featured in this update are as follows:
– Showing staked versus non-staked packets sent down/throttled
– Utilizing smallvec to aggregate chunks in Quic, resulting in saving 1 allocation per packet
– Implementing the BankingStage Forwarding Filter
– Adjusting the minimal 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, has advised validators to upgrade to the latest patch only if there is less than a 5% delinquent stake. In the Solana context, delinquency refers to inactive validators, and the percentage specifies the total stake held by offline validators. Therefore, validators are urged to install the updates only when the network has less than 5% inactive validator stakes.
In the midst of surging network activity and the frenzy surrounding memecoins, the Solana network experienced congestion issues for nearly a week, with a transaction failure rate as high as 75%. While developers were diligently working on resolving the problem, a Solana co-founder noted that the ongoing network congestion issues were simply a bug rather than a fundamental network problem.
The Solana Foundation attributes the current network congestion problems to various factors, including the high demand for Solana block space and the delayed implementation of patches to address network-related issues. Austin Federa, the strategy lead at the Solana Foundation, revealed to Cointelegraph that developers have been tirelessly working to fix the issue, but the network demand has outpaced their timely intervention. Federa added that the engineers have been working long hours, with minimal sleep, to prepare patches and test features before they are deployed on the mainnet.
Nevertheless, the Solana developers have developed a series of patches to tackle the ongoing issue, with the first patch made available to developers on April 15.