Solana Blockchain stopped for four hours

Solana is experiencing another power outage, but will soon reactivate, according to statements from the project on Twitter.

Solana stopped this morning

Solana has not processed any blocks or transactions since shortly after 12:00 UTC, June 1, based on block explorer data.

On Twitter, the Solana team attributed the problem to a flaw in the blockchain’s permanent non-transaction feature. This led to non-determinism, meaning that different nodes generated different results for the same block and failed to reach a consensus.

Solana added that the network and funds are secure. It has also published instructions for rebooting for validators within the last hour, suggesting that the chain will soon be back online.

Solana has been subject to frequent outages and congestion incidents. The latest issue occurred on April 30 when NFT minting bots flooded the network with transactions.

At least four other events preceded today’s outage, including a 47-hour outage in January 2022, at least two events in December 2021, and at least one event in September 2021.

The SOL price is down

Today’s power outage seems to have caused the Solana (SOL) token to lose value, as it is down 10.9% in the last 24 hours. It is also down 84% from its all-time high of $259.96, last seen in November 2021.

However, this trend is likely exacerbated by a general slowdown in the crypto market. Bitcoin, a benchmark for the rest of the market, is down 5.7% over the past 24 hours and down 56% from its all-time high, also seen in November 2021.

Solana is considered an Ethereum competitor due to its high transaction throughput, something that Ethereum itself has yet to achieve. It has also been championed by the major stock exchange FTX, which has worked extensively on the project.

These advantages have helped SOL become the ninth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. However, continued blackouts are likely to damage market value and status.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies, and did not own SOL.