Is Solana Down? Network Suffers Fresh Downtime Amid Market Decline

The Solana mainnet has suffered a major outage in the hours leading up to press time. The outage was attributed to a bug that caused Solana node operators to start “generating different results for the same block.”

The lack of consensus meant that the network could not continue producing new blocks, hence the halt. Solana validators are currently coordinating a restart in the project’s Discord channel.

Block production on Solana Mainnet Beta has halted. Validator operators should prepare for a restart in mb-validators on Discord. https://t.co/gRJJRqEMPn

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) June 1, 2022

As a temporary fix, Solana Labs developers are preparing to release new mainnet versions that will disable the “durable nonce” feature that caused the bug. A long-term fix will be implemented in a future release, according to another update from Solana Labs.

The latest downtime continues a period of growing pain for the “beta” network, often labeled by proponents as an “Ethereum killer.” Apparently, the network’s developers are struggling to keep the network afloat, with the most recent major outage only dating back to April 30.

Solana (SOL) Drops 9% Amid Market Downturn

The price of Solana’s native token, SOL, has suffered a 9% decline within the past 24 hours. However, the price movement is more correlated with broader market performance, instead of the current network issues.

The global crypto market has suffered an over 5% decline over the same period, with Bitcoin struggling to hold the $30,000 mark. Solana (SOL) is trading at around $41, which is more than 80% below its all-time high at $259 in November.

Network Back Online

Following an approximate 4.5-hour outage, Solana network validators successfully coordinated a cluster restart of the Solana mainnet.

Update: This article has been updated to include information about the reason behind the downtime and a successful cluster restart.