Solana shuts down for eighth time this year

Solana
  • Solana’s ease-of-use, market-leading TPS and low fees are formidable qualities
  • On the flipside, the latest shutdown marks eighth outage this year
  • How deep is this problem, and what does the future hold?

If I had a dollar for every Solana closing this year, I could afford 500g of cashews at the local supermarket (that’s $8, for those who don’t know how weirdly expensive nuts are).

In what has become a disconcertingly familiar story, Solana shut off again last week. It wasn’t to observe the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations either, but rather because the mainnet lost consensus protocol for seven hours. In a cruel twist of irony, it comes not long after Solana co-founder gave an interview to CNBC asserting that Bitcoin needed to change to Proof-of-Stake in order to remain relevant. Woops.

To fall

Solana reminds me of the last pair of headphones I had. They were perfect – delivering smooth sound, the microphone was crystal clear, and they held up solidly in my ears while exercising. But for months, the sound kept ringing in the right earbud and I couldn’t figure out the reason. Sometimes it lasted five minutes, other times more than an hour.

When they worked, Bruce Springsteen blared out loud and clear, and it was glorious. But what good is a pair of earphones that don’t allow you to play music whenever you want?

The market has realized that this is a big deal (Solana’s breakdowns, not my musical struggles) as Solana’s price has plummeted this year, losing three-quarters of its value since the day of l ‘Year. And yes – all assets are down, but plotting Solana’s price action against Bitcoin’s shows that the magnitude of the fall here was uglier than even the horrific price drops in the rest of the market. cryptography.

What it Means Going Forward

I don’t have a computer science background. I have played around with R, Matlab and Python, but I’m simply not qualified to opine on the intricacies of the challenges currently facing Solana developers. Everywhere on the Internet, you will see average Joes and Janes give their emotional opinions on why or why not these problems are small hiccups or insurmountable challenges – I have no interest in offering a speculative opinion on this topic, as it wouldn’t be worthy of the ink it’s written in (or perhaps it wouldn’t be worth the wear-and-tear on the keys of my laptop, to use a more modernised analogy?).

But what I’m going to do is take an analytical angle and use some basic logic to assess the situation. It is a blockchain with immense potential – capable of higher transaction per second (TPS) than any other major cryptocurrency. But what good is a blockchain if it has an off button? And to be honest with you, I’m a little tired of using the words ‘potential’, ‘could’ and ‘maybe’ when talking about Solana.

This was actually a rather benign stoppage on a quiet day for crypto, which is good news in one respect, but also quite scary when you think about it. What happens if the next Solana power cut occurs during an explosive charge upwards in the crypto markets or a violent crash day? Investors won’t be able to transact, buy or sell any Solana products, and that, for lack of a better expression, just isn’t cool.

Conclusion

Like I said, I’m a little tired of writing about Solana’s breakdowns. Although he has all the potential in the world, it means precisely nothing if he cannot fix these chronic flaws. It feels like we are now in a critical period – a slowdown (or even a plateau) in development while the macro environment is so horrible, not to mention the great competitor that is Ethereum which is getting closer and closer of its potentially game-changing merger, could deal a devastating blow to Solana.

Solana is an incredible blockchain when it’s “on” – cheap to use, smooth, quick and frictionless. Then again, I ended up buying a new pair of earphones after months of promising myself they would fix the glitching issue.

If these problems persist for Solana, investors who keep the faith will continue to brighten and the future will look increasingly bleak.

But let’s hope the flipside is true – that one day we will look back upon these hurdles as minor challenges that were overcome during the beta phase, as the formidable Solana blockchain bootstrapped its way to widespread adoption.

They say a cat has nine lives – well, maybe it’s the same with blockchains. In this case, after eight breakdowns this year, Solana is in the saloon of the last chance.

admin

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