Solana Suffers 11th Outage In 2 Years, SOL Price Drops 3%

The Solana blockchain network is currently experiencing an outage, marking its 11th such incident in the past two years. As of the latest updates, Solana’s mainnet-beta has been non-operational for about two hours, with block progression coming to a standstill.

The issue was first noticed when Solscan and OKLink, two prominent block explorers, indicated a lack of new transactions on the network. The last recorded transaction was at 9:52 am UTC. Upbit, a crypto exchange, subsequently announced the suspension of deposits and withdrawals for SOL and several other tokens, citing the ongoing disruption.

Solana’s team acknowledged the situation through an incident report. “Engineers from across the ecosystem are investigating an outage on mainnet-beta,” they stated, confirming the incident but not providing details on the cause.

Engineers from across the ecosystem are investigating an outage on mainnet-beta. This thread will be updated as more information becomes available https://t.co/rfeioQ6BG9

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 6, 2024

Laine, a blockchain software company and validator for Solana, provided further insights into the technical challenges being faced. “Consensus on the last optimistic slot has been reached at 246464040, validators are on standby for next steps as needed,” Laine explained.

They also mentioned that engineers are working on a potential fix, but it remains uncertain if a coordinated cluster restart will be necessary. “Engineers are building a release containing a remediation, once this has been built and tested further instructions will be released to validators,” the team said.

Adding to the updates, SolanaFloor reported, “UPDATE: Validators have begun generating snapshots using their local ledger state to prepare for a restart. Solana ecosystem Core engineers are still preparing the remediation build release for the outage.”

This incident marks the first outage since February 2023, as per Solana’s status page. Notably, the platform faced multiple outages in 2022 due to node issues, with a significant disruption in September 2021 that lasted nearly 18 hours.

The recurrent outages have drawn criticism from industry experts. Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole Investments, remarked on the decentralization aspect, stating, “Solana’s 11th outage in the last 2 years. This is not what decentralization looks like.”

The market response to this latest event has been mixed. Crypto analyst Gumshoe offered a nuanced view, suggesting that while the outage is negative news, it could ironically backfire on those who short the token late:

“Solana down is obviously bad, but nothing new

– All the SOL haters now have a catalyst to short

– We’re in a choppy market, this is a clear trading signal

– Everyone is hungry for money, will revenge trade

This can ironically go very wrong for late shorts”

Pentoshi, another renowned analyst, advised patience, noting that the market is currently consolidating and that investors should not rush into decisions based on the anticipation of constant breakouts:

Market chopsolidating. People trying to catch breakouts on some of these expecting trend continuation daily. […] I don’t think it goes as low as I had shown originally but likely to $75-78 at some point.

At press time, the Solana (SOL) price experienced a slight downtrend following the incident, dropping by as much as 3%. A closer examination of the 1-week SOL/USD chart reveals that the recent setback represents only a minor deviation in the broader market trajectory.

On the upside, the SOL price is currently encountering resistance at the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement level ($107.75). This level serves as a key threshold that could determine the future bullish momentum of SOL. Conversely, on the downside, critical support is found at the 0.236 Fibonacci level, which is valued at $69.6.