What’s Causing the Traffic Jams on Solana? How Will the Upgrade Ease the Congestion?
Solana has been facing serious congestion issues in recent weeks, resulting in slow transaction processing and frequent instances of failed transactions. In March of this year, Solana’s total transaction volume skyrocketed to $4 billion, far surpassing the average daily volume of less than $500 million in 2023.
There are two main reasons for the network congestion. First, the surge in trading volume of meme coins has overwhelmed the network. Second, the popularity of the Ore mining project has led to a significant increase in transaction volume as miners strive to earn rewards.
To address these issues, the Solana team released the mainnet Beta version update v1.17.31 on April 12. After three days of testing, this version has now been recommended for use by all mainnet validators. This update enhances the efficiency of data packet processing and optimizes the node classification mechanism, aiming to alleviate the network congestion.
What is the future direction of Solana’s upgrades?
The v1.17.31 upgrade is just the first step in resolving Solana’s congestion issues, and further enhancements and optimizations will be implemented in the subsequent v1.18 version. Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, stated on X that it usually takes about 30 updates or patches to confirm the final version.
Solana developer @0xMert_ also discussed the congestion issues faced by the Solana network on X. He pointed out that the high usage of bots has led to a sharp increase in “failed” transactions on the network. These “failed” transactions refer to those that have been successfully submitted to the Solana network but are ultimately deemed “error requests” due to smart contract rules.
Therefore, the final upgraded version of the Solana network will prioritize transactions initiated by “good” validators, who have a larger stake at the node leader and confirm transactions there. This “priority arrangement” allows high-quality validators to receive better service and prevents low-quality validators from maliciously flooding the network.
According to Austin Federa, the head of strategy at Solana Foundation, the development team is testing the v1.18 version online to further enhance network performance and alleviate congestion. He emphasized that developers are working hard to ensure the stability and efficient execution of the new version.
References: cointelegraph, coindesk, theblock
Proofread by: Gao Jingyuan