Solana Price Dip
The price of Solana’s SOL token has experienced a 4.1% drop following a “major outage” on the Solana network.
Price Movement
According to CoinGecko data, SOL price dipped to $93.36 but has since recovered slightly to $93.70, marking a 4.1% decrease for the day and over 11% for the week.
Network Outage Details
The Solana network’s mainnet-beta cluster faced a “major outage,” prompting investigation by engineers from across the ecosystem. The issue was reported on the status page at 10:22 a.m. UTC.
Validator Software Update
Solana Status Twitter account reported the release of a new validator software update, version v1.17.20, addressing the issue that caused the cluster to halt.
Historical Outages
While this isn’t the first outage for Solana, it is the first in a long time. The last major outage occurred in February 2023, lasting almost 20 hours. Solana had previously promised a “long-term fix” with the upcoming Firedancer client.
Firedancer Client Development
The Firedancer client, intended to provide a solution to network outages, is under development. An early version, “Frankendancer,” is on a testnet, and the goal is to move it to Solana mainnet by summer. Firedancer aims to be fully independent by the end of 2024.
Root Cause of Outages
Past outages on Solana’s network were attributed to issues with the software used by validators to run nodes. The development of Firedancer seeks to create a backup software to enhance network resilience.
Recent Positive News
Despite the outage, Solana experienced a surge in network activity the previous week. Token trading on Solana decentralized exchanges briefly surpassed that of Ethereum DEXs, driven by excitement over the upcoming Jupiter airdrop.