Solana Network Update Addresses Recent Congestion Issues
The recent congestion issues that have been plaguing the Solana network have made it incredibly difficult to use. In response to these challenges, the dev team Anza, which spun out of Solana Labs earlier this year, announced the release of the v1.17.31 update for the Agave validator client. This update, aimed at alleviating some of the ongoing network congestion, is the first step in a series of enhancements planned for the network. Anza has confirmed that further fixes will be included in the upcoming v1.18 release.
Potential Causes of Network Issues
The network congestion on Solana can be attributed to a variety of factors. While the increasing trading volume for meme coins and other tokens on the network has played a role, there are other underlying causes as well. One such factor is the Solana protocol, which has been compared to Bitcoin mining. Additionally, there have been allegations that some infrastructure firms have been exploiting a bug to gain an unfair advantage.
The Solana Foundation has acknowledged that a bottleneck in the QUIC implementation on the Agave validator client has been a major contributor to the network’s performance issues. Austin Federa, Head of Strategy at the organization, confirmed that this bottleneck was being addressed in the recent update due to the surging demand on the network.
Testing and Deployment of the Update
Anza has been actively testing the v1.17.31 update in preparation for its deployment. After running trials on the Solana testnet, the team urged validators to upgrade to the new version promptly. While there is no set timeline for the v1.18 release, developers have cautioned that it may not provide a complete solution to the congestion issues.
Rex St. John from Anza highlighted that while the update improves fee collection for validators, its full impact will only be evident once it is tested in a production environment. Currently, one-third of all validators have adopted the v1.17.31 version, with version 1.17.28 still being the most widely used among validator operators, running on nearly 49% of all machines.
Overall, the network update is a promising development for the Solana ecosystem, signaling a proactive approach to addressing the challenges that have hindered user experience in recent weeks.
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