After the strong SOL price rally over the past few months, the Solana blockchain network has hit yet another roadblock recently. The Solana blockchain has been facing unprecedented levels of congestion while leading to a massive failure of transactions.
As per the data on Dune Analytics on Thursday, April 4, a staggering 75% of all non-vote transactions failed on the Solana blockchain. This coincides with a major surge in Solana network activity driven majorly by the ongoing craze of meme coins on the platform. As a result, Solana’s unique user count and transaction volumes have also skyrocketed simultaneously.
The latest development has sparked strong debate in the Solana community with several users openly voicing their frustrations as well as a deteriorating experience. In a post on the X platform on Thursday, April 4, pseudonymous crypto trader Altcoin Sherpa stated that the current experience on Solana has been less than ideal. However, he noted that Solana would still be the blockchain network for retail adoption.
As much as I think that $SOL is the chain for retail this cycle…
the experience is fucking brutal lately pic.twitter.com/7pbjddTC6v
— Altcoin Sherpa (@AltcoinSherpa) April 4, 2024
Interestingly, Solana’s network congestion issues popped up at a time when the Solana community Superteam produced a promotional video attacking ETHMAXI and criticizing Ethereum. Moreover, the official Solana account and the Chairman of the Solana Foundation have also tweeted about the same. This video says that several developers have been suffering from ETMAXI while requesting them to cross-chain Solana via Wormhole.
🏥 经医生诊断，您患上了 ETHMAXI （以太坊极端主义）综合症，请立刻通过 @wormhole 跨链到Solana 获得治疗
查看 @SuperteamDAO 创作的视频，看看您是否有对应症状？ 😉
Solana欢迎您。 pic.twitter.com/LMuSnTOKpT— Solana 中文社群 (@Solana_zh) April 4, 2024
Crypto Community Comes In Support of Solana
Amid the ongoing crisis, Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius and a prominent advocate for Solana, tried to address the escalating concerns. Mumtaz contended that the purported 75% transaction failure rate misinterprets the network’s condition, asserting that the majority of these failures stem from “bot spam” rather than genuine user transactions being obstructed.
To further explain the nature of these “failed transactions”, Mumtaz also provided a detailed explanation while drawing parallels to Web2 operations. He noted that the failed transactions wherein the smart contracts on Solana deemed a request invalid were due to several reasons. This includes the lack of permissions or changes in the market conditions instead of any issues with the blockchain itself.
there is a stat going around CT about failed transactions on Solana
it is misleading and 90% of the people using it don’t know what it means
I will explain (for non-technical folks only)
first, an example of how a usual interaction in web2 works:
– you go on twitter and click… pic.twitter.com/SBcZRDOkD5
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) March 24, 2024
Thus, Mumtaz added that the real issue is with the excessive selling of spam transactions and not with Solana’s throughput. “The chart [referring to failed transactions] importantly doesn’t accurately capture the user experience since the overwhelming number of issues are before the txns even make it to the block,” Mumtaz explained.