Over the weekend, Solana’s blockchain was clogged with traffic as Donald Trump and Melania Trump memecoins were popular.
This sudden spike in demand overwhelmed the network causing failures and delays across all platforms.
Solana congestion
The demand for prominent Solana services such as Phantom, Jito and Jupiter along with centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Binance was overwhelming.
Phantom, the largest wallet service provider in Solana announced on January 19th that it was experiencing strains on its infrastructure. It reported processing over 8 millions requests per minute. The system was unable to handle this volume and transactions were subsequently failed.
Phantom informed users that they were working to stabilise operations and encouraged patience.
The platform also highlighted the significant engagement of users, with more than $1.25 Billion in volume traded and over 10 Million transactions made during the last day.
Jito is a provider of liquid staking solutions on the Blockchain network. “Block Engine API [experienced] severe degradation due to unprecedented load levels.”
This team also added:
“While the Solana network continues to operate and process blocks, transaction submission through our service remains impacted.”
A centralized exchange was not exempt from the effects. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong emphasized the strain placed on the Solana Infrastructure, noting the team’s efforts to scale up operations in order to meet the unexpected demand.
Armstrong:
“Team is working hard on scaling our Solana infra now – lots of Solana activity last few days, we were not anticipating this level of surge.”
Binance is also having issues with USDC withdrawals from Solana.
The root causes
Mert Mumtaz of Helius Labs gave an insight on the difficulties that the Solana system faces.
While block production was still active, incomplete transaction were common because of a variety of factors.
- Low slippage settings due to high volatility in the memecoin price led to a higher likelihood of failures.
- Overuse of Compute Units by certain applications led to inefficient block packaging and high transaction fees.
- Unpredictability in the APIs that charge fees creates chaotic environments at auction.
- Agave’s client software was plagued by bugs that left an important portion of the capacity unutilized, putting the system under additional strain.
Mumtaz said that the experience was a valuable one, and stressed the need to address bottlenecks in order to improve scalability.
He highlighted Solana’s progress, noting that similar demand spikes in earlier years could have entirely halted block production.
Mumtaz added:
“A large number of these problems are preventable, but sometimes require massive demand events like this weekend to force teams to actually integrate (fee APIs are a big example of this).”
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