The Solana network achieves over 3,000 transactions per second and has some of the lowest fees. Its developers hope a new validation client will help it scale and improve transaction speeds, providing stability.
The Solana (SOL) network, very promising when it emerged in 2020, has become cannon fodder for pranks on social media. According to jokes from observers, it has more power outages than the UK might have this winter.
Solana Is the Self-Proclaimed Killer of Ethereum
Solana, the self-proclaimed killer of Ethereum, raved about its capabilities when it emerged in 2020. It said it supported over 50,000 transactions per second and had over 200 nodes on its testnet then.
This protocol is among the few that achieve over 3,000 transactions per second, with a theoretical maximum capacity of 65,000. The validating nodes keeping the blockchain secure and processing transactions seem to have exceeded 2,000.
The Solana network also has some of the lowest transaction fees in the crypto market, averaging USD 0.00025. Ethereum, the most prominent money, NFT and dApps platform, processes only 20 transactions per second, each at USD 0.52.
The Solana Network Has Frequent Power Outage Issues
Although Solana offers comparative advantages, it struggles to achieve efficiency as frequent network outage issues cause inconvenience to millions of users.
Memory overload, bugs, or power outages have led Solana to collapse eight times from inception. Meanwhile, Ethereum froze in 2017 after launching CryptoKitties non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and ran into trouble in April when releasing the NFT Otherside for USD 500 million.
According to experts, Solana has been ready for trouble from the beginning. Justin Bons, the founder of Cyber Capital, said the way Solana responded outrageously to a technology failure in early October.
Solana did not work for over three hours on October 1st, as a single validator created an invalid block. Bons, a cryptocurrency researcher, explained that the situation got validators stuck on the wrong chain, unable to return.
Solana Needs to Solve Its Power Outage Curse
Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder of Solana, promised a long-term solution to the power outages. He referred to that situation as their curse but said enough users and apps run it as it is cheap and fast.
The developers behind Solana hope a new validation client will help it scale and improve transaction speeds. Regarding how it works, they believe it will provide the network with stability on a white paper.
The validator might position Solana for higher long-term impact through the latest algorithms, software, hardware, and network technologies. Those factors would increase transaction performance and lower the fees per transaction as much as possible.
Yakovenko said a separate team would develop the validation client, which means they may not have the same bugs in the code.
The Price Action of the Native Token of Solana
SOL, the native token of Solana, could not avoid suffering the consequences of the power outage curse. After rising by over 10,500% in 2021, it has dropped like a brick this year. The crypto asset peaked at USD 260 on November 6th, 2021, but has plummeted by 87% since then.
Solana is trading at around USD 30.93 and has accumulated a 1.7% loss over the last 24 hours. While its daily trading volume is above USD 665.97 million, its market capitalization is about USD 11.06 billion, according to CoinGecko.
By Alexander Salazar
