The Solana blockchain has experienced a significant halt in block production, leading to a temporary network shutdown. This interruption began at approximately 10:00 UTC on February 6th, and as of the last report, the network has been non-operational for around two hours.

Investigation Underway

Following the incident, Solana’s official communication channels alerted users to the mainnet-beta outage. Developers and validators from the Solana ecosystem have been actively working to diagnose and resolve the issue. Laine, a blockchain software developer and active Solana validator, has pointed out that the stoppage was the result of a “performance degradation” within the network’s main infrastructure.

Solana Mainnet-Beta is experiencing a performance degradation, block progression is currently halted, core engineers & validators are actively investigating. — Laine ❤️ stakewiz.com (@laine_sa_) February 6, 2024

Network Restart Initiative

Laine has since announced that a network restart is in progress, with validators updating to the new software version v1.17.20. The resumption of block production is contingent upon 80% of the network’s validators updating their software. The goal is to pick up from slot 246,464,041—the point just before the outage occurred at slot 246,464,003. At the time of reporting, 60% progress has been made towards this target.

A cluster restart on v1.17.20 has begun, you can follow the progress here: https://t.co/2tIgKBUc6o Once 80% of stake has restarted the cluster will resume block production from slot 246464041 — Laine ❤️ stakewiz.com (@laine_sa_) February 6, 2024

Market Impact

The SOL token has not been immune to the effects of the network’s downtime. The asset’s price dropped from around $96 to just under $94, with a low of $93.62, marking a decrease of over 4% within a 24-hour timeframe, as per data from CoinMarketCap. Interestingly, trading volumes surged by 11% to $1.6 billion, which could indicate a mix of sell-off and opportunistic buying during the dip.

Historical Context

This is not the first time Solana has faced network issues. In February of the previous year, the network underwent two restarts due to an unidentified error that brought economic activities to a standstill. Most nodes had transitioned to a new software version 1.14.16 shortly before the issues began, leading to a complete cessation of user transactions, with the exception of validator voting.