Solana Blockchain Experiences Technical Glitch Causing Transaction Slowdowns

The Solana smart contract token network experienced a technical glitch on Saturday, February 25, 2023, known as a “large forking event,” causing transaction failures for some users. Solana’s incident report referred to it as “cluster instability” and indicated that a coordinated restart was launched to accelerate block finalization.

Solana Blockchain Deals With ‘Large Forking Event’

On Saturday at about 6:37 UTC, the Solana blockchain experienced reduced functionality, and users reported a significant slowdown in block finalization, along with some transaction failures. Solblaze, the liquid staking pool, reported that while Solana did not completely stop block production, it did experience a slowdown due to a forking event.

Solblaze stated that “Solana is currently operational” despite a large forking event on mainnet-beta that has caused validators to slow down as they attempt to resolve forks. The account said the network was confirming blocks at a rate of about 16 transactions per second. Validator operators and Solana engineers are collaborating to identify the underlying cause. Additionally, Solblaze mentioned that “validators are beginning to revert from v1.14 to v1.13.”

A coordinated restart is underway to address an issue during the upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 that caused block finalization to slow significantly.

Validators: please follow instructions below https://t.co/L7b3kAFOJS

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 25, 2023

The Solana Status update website contains similar information, referring to the issue as “cluster instability.” It indicated that Solana engineers are investigating slow root production on mainnet beta and that a coordinated restart was launched “to resolve an issue during the upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 that caused a significant slowdown in block finalization.”

The Solana Status page includes a document link that provides validators with instructions on how to proceed with the restart. Essentially, validators were required to take a snapshot at slot 179526408, modify validator command-lines, install the previous version 1.13.6, and then restart the validator. Solana’s recent issues are reminiscent of the problems the blockchain encountered last year, including multiple block production outages.

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Altcoins, block finalization, Block Production, Blockchain, blockchain technology, cluster instability, command-lines, Cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency market, decentralized finance, DeFi, Digital Currency, digital wallets, Engineers, Ethereum, forking event, mainnet-beta, Outages, root production, slowdowns, Smart Contracts, Snapshot, Solana, Solana outages, Solblaze, technical glitch, tps, transaction failures, Upgrade, Validator, version, Virtual Currency

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Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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