FX.co ★ Solana suffers network instability

Solana, one of the largest blockchain networks, was hit by instability during a tough week for cryptocurrencies.

According to a notice on the Solana website dated January 22, the issue experienced by validators that use their computing power to help verify the network was caused by excessive duplicate transactions. Engineers have released version 1.8.14, which "will attempt to mitigate the worst effects of this issue," the notice said. It added that more improvements are expected to come out in the next 8 to 12 weeks, and many of those features are being "rigorously tested."

"Solana mainnet beta is experiencing high levels of network congestion. The last 24 hours have shown these systems need to be improved to meet the demands of users, and support the more complex transactions now common on the network," the notice said.

Solana's network status web page listed all its systems as fully operational as of Monday.

A tweet on an unverified account that was retweeted by Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko attributed the network's issues to "current market volatility," without providing further details.

On the other hand, Solana has had problems before. In September, for example, it suffered a 17-hour outage sparked by what it called "resource exhaustion."

Solana's troubles came amid a broad pullback in tokens from Bitcoin and Ether to Polkadot and Solana itself, which has plummeted more than 30% over the past seven days, according to pricing from CoinGecko.

Overall, global crypto markets has lost about $1 trillion in market value. Bitcoin has shed almost 50% from its record high in November.

According to Emin Gun Sirer, CEO of Ava Labs and the founder of Avalanche, the smaller Avalanche blockchain has so far held up well under the recent stress. "Chain performance was solid throughout," he said.

Cardano is also overcoming problems well. However, don't get your hopes up.

There was a large amount of information in my articles that cryptocurrencies would be in demand until the Fed took more serious action. However, it also came as a surprise to me how quickly the market started shrinking after the first warning shot. Is it possible that the crypto market is in a panic? After all, interest rates are scheduled to rise in March. So why are we facing cuts right now?

Apparently, big crypto investors are withdrawing their assets from the sector in order to use them to complete mergers or plug other holes in their budgets caused by the broad decline in indices over the last week.

However, the question that worries me the most is whether the size of the crypto market will be enough to plug all the holes of the big investors.