Solana is facing another outage, raising concerns about its future. Despite promising fast transactions and low fees, the network has been plagued by a series of outages, questioning its dominance in the proof-of-stake (PoS) scene.

A history of outages

In September 2021, Solana encountered a significant disruption during the token offering of Grape Protocol, resulting in a 17-hour outage. This incident was followed by multiple outages throughout 2022, including a 29-hour outage in January and a two-hour block production halt in April.

In 2023, Solana faced a 19-hour outage in February due to congestion within its primary block-propagation protocol, Turbine. Despite some major outages, the network has managed to run smoothly for the rest of the year.

However, in 2024, Solana experienced another significant outage in February, lasting around five hours. Recent congestion issues have caused delays in transactions, prompting Anza Network to announce plans to address these issues.

Expert opinions

Max Shannon, an analyst at CoinShares, explained that recent failed transactions were not outages but rather implementation bugs. He highlighted Solana’s history of outages as a major disadvantage but acknowledged efforts to address scalability issues.

Roman Levi, CTO of Playnance, expressed concerns about the frequency of Solana’s outages and their impact on user experience. He emphasized the need for stability in a blockchain aiming to be an industry leader.

Competition with Ethereum

Despite its recurrent outages, Solana still commands a massive user base, with its defi total value locked (TVL) surging. However, Ethereum continues to push upgrades to maintain its dominance in the smart contracts space.

While Solana offers fast and cheap transactions, it lags in addressing scalability and reliability concerns compared to Ethereum. The recent release of Dencun by Ethereum aims to challenge Solana’s low-fee advantage.

Solana’s meme coin craze

The recent meme coin craze on Solana has attracted developers and users to the network. Projects like Bonk, dogwifhat, and Myro have raised millions, showcasing the network’s scalability and brand exposure.

Despite some rugpulls, the meme coin ecosystem on Solana has passed a scalability test, proving the network’s ability to handle increased traffic. This trend has exposed Solana to a wider global audience.

While Solana continues to grow, persistent outages and network issues pose challenges to its goal of surpassing Ethereum as the dominant smart contracts platform.

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