Solana Blockchain Faces Yet Another Outage

The Solana blockchain experienced a significant outage, halting all block production on its mainnet-beta since 10:22 UTC, February 6th. Engineers and validators across the Solana ecosystem are currently in a frantic race against time to resolve the issue that has temporarily brought the network to a standstill.

The outage was first acknowledged through an official communication by the Solana team, stating that all hands were on deck to investigate the root cause of the stop-in block advancement. The Solana Blockchain Explorer confirmed the severity of the situation by marking it as a “major outage.”

Engineers from across the ecosystem are investigating an outage on mainnet-beta. This thread will be updated as more information becomes available https://t.co/rfeioQ6BG9

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 6, 2024

After Effects 

This disruption has not gone unnoticed, with social media platforms buzzing about the inability of the blockchain to generate a block after 25 minutes, a significant delay considering Solana’s touted block creation time of just 400 milliseconds. 

In response to the crisis, Stakewiz, a noted Solana validator, revealed that developers are hastily working on a fix. There is a concerted effort to prepare a version that addresses the outage, with further details to be shared upon readiness. Meanwhile, validators are taking proactive steps by creating snapshots of their local ledger state, gearing up for a network restart.

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 ripple effects of the outage have extended to cryptocurrency exchanges, with Upbit announcing a temporary halt on the trading of Solana-based tokens, including *SOL*, GMT, RAY, and ACS.