Solana, the ambitious blockchain ecosystem, showed its resilience in the face of adversity and experienced a major network outage that temporarily affected its cryptocurrency value.
The recent drop in SOL price, which fell to $93.36 during the outage, highlighted a challenging time for the blockchain platform. However, the subsequent rapid recovery, with SOL currently trading at $101.80, reflects the network’s ability to recover, marking a notable 6.6% increase in the last 24 hours.
Solana: Price Stagnation, Sudden Increase, Blackout Recovery
Amid weeks of relative price stagnation, which saw SOL fluctuate between $90 and $99, Solana’s recent rise is in stark contrast. This period of minimal price change reflected a cautious sentiment prevailing in the cryptocurrency market, which contributed to a 10% correction in Solana’s value, painting a tentatively bearish picture.
The network faced an outage of four hours and 46 minutes, causing considerable disruption. Despite the setback, Solana developers quickly addressed the issue by deploying a new software patch from Solana Labs. The recovery process involved mainnet validators rebooting their nodes with the updated software, emphasizing the platform’s commitment to stability, as posted via X, on February 6:
“Block production on Solana mainnet beta resumed at 14:57 UTC, following a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators. Engineers will continue to monitor performance as network operations are restored.
The outage began at approximately 09:53 UTC, lasting 5 hours. Core contributors are working on a root cause report, which will be made available once complete.”
Although the Solana Foundation has not issued a formal statement regarding the cause of the outage, a tweet from VanEck’s Head of Digital Asset Research, Matthew Sigel, suggested that a possible bug identified and patched in the Solana testnet could be the culprit:
Solana outage, what happened?
BPF loader, the “Berkley Packet Filter,” which is the mechanism to deploy upgrade and execute programs on Solana, failed. This seems to relate to a previous SMID (Solana Improvement Proposal) that altered some of the features including the adding a blocker to stop metadata from being used in the BPF because it was no longer needed…”
This tweet gained traction when Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and other notable developers shared it, underscoring its importance.
Solana has faced prolonged network issues before. About a year ago, a 19-hour outage occurred after a network upgrade. The Solana Foundation attributed the problem to extensive use of “custom block forwarding software” by several applications.
Solana has seen an increase in activity. Token trading volume on its decentralized exchanges recently surpassed that of Ethereum, indicating growing interest and adoption. The recent network outage may have affected investor sentiment, but the dynamic nature of the cryptocurrency market means that situations can evolve quickly.
Solana: Price Projections, Stability Concerns Persist
According to the latest price predictions, the Solana price is expected to fluctuate between $92 and $119 in February 2024. The price is expected to rise to $400 in 2025 and reach an all-time high of $445 in 2027. Market analysts and experts They predict that Solana is expected to cross a price level of $517 in 2029. However, it is important to note that these predictions are subject to change and may not be entirely accurate.
Investors and enthusiasts are closely following Solana’s trajectory as it strives to establish itself as a pillar of blockchain ecosystems. The Solana Foundation’s upcoming root cause report is eagerly awaited, offering insight into the outage and potentially addressing concerns about network stability.
By Audy Castaneda
