On February 6, 10:22 UTC, the Solana network experienced a major outage, and engineers from across the ecosystem are looking into a mainnet-beta issue.
Solana Mainnet-Beta is experiencing block production issues because block progression has been halted, and core engineers and validators are actively investigating. The Solana Blockchain Explorer is indicating a “major outage” on the mainnet.
Solana blockchain outage warning. Source: Solana
Users on social media noticed that the Solana blockchain had not produced a block in more than 25 minutes, which is unusual given Solana’s block production time of 400 milliseconds.
Solana blockchain stopped block production. Source: X
The validator stakewiz informed validators that the developers are currently working on a release that will include a remediation; once this is completed and tested, validators will receive additional instructions. The X account also stated that validators have begun generating snapshots of their local ledger state in preparation for a restart, while core engineers continue to prepare the release.
Validators have begun generating snapshots using their local ledger state to prepare for a restart. Core engineers are still preparing the release.
— Laine ❤️ stakewiz.com (@laine_sa_) February 6, 2024
The network outage has already begun to have an impact on crypto exchanges, with Upbit announcing that deposits and withdrawals of Solana-based tokens such as SOL, GMT, RAY, and ACS will be suspended.
This is not the first time the blockchain has experienced a network outage or downtime during block production; the network has been plagued by downtimes in recent years. The latest outage will be the 11th in the previous two years.
Solana blockchain was launched in March 2020, with a focus on providing scalable solutions for a decentralized ecosystem similar to Ethereum but with faster transaction processing time and lower transaction fees. The network rose to prominence during the last bull cycle in 2021 as adoption rates and token prices increased. However, network-related issues have persisted with the blockchain network, requiring developers to restart it on several occasions in the past.
