Is Solana down? A distributed denial of service attack caused transactions per second to fall below 500 — and there are fears the disruption is affecting confidence in the blockchain.
"The fastest blockchain in the world" is facing some uncomfortable questions after being hit by a distributed denial of service attack.
At the time of writing, Solana is handling 2,976 transactions per second — but this wasn't the case on Thursday.
Disruption took this number below 500, and while this isn't comparable to the high-profile outage that wiped out Solana for 18 hours in September, there are fears it could further dent confidence in the project.
According to CoinDesk, Solana's recent track record is stymying outreach efforts. Daffy Durairaj, the co-founder of a trading service based on its blockchain, warned:
"I'm trying to bring in these market-makers and traders and whatnot. They just lose a lot of confidence when the nodes go down, and then they don't know why."
For its part, Solana appeared to be tight-lipped during the disruption, and no updates were forthcoming on Twitter.
The SOL token — which has risen steadily through the rankings over the past year — didn't appear to be too affected by the drama, either. At the time of writing, SOL is down 7% over the past 24 hours… roughly in line with the performance of other major altcoins.
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Bad PR
Crypto Twitter wasted little time in criticizing the project. One user shared a screenshot of Solana's website, which claims the network is "decentralized and unstoppable." They quipped:
"Solana should tell the truth. More like centralized and stoppable."
Others pointed to how such issues were far less likely to happen on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Projects like Solana have enjoyed plenty of positive momentum in recent months because of how they have been dubbed "Ethereum killers."
The Ethereum blockchain is currently in the throes of a painstaking process that will move the network from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
Given how the ETH mainnet can only handle 15 transactions per second at present, this upgrade is regarded as nothing short of crucial. The network is home to most decentralized finance protocols and non-fungible token collections, but congestion has caused transaction fees to go through the roof — rendering the blockchain too expensive to use for many people.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg Intelligence's 2022 outlook suggested that Ethereum shouldn't be too worried about competition from the likes of Solana and Cardano. Senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone wrote:
"Ethereum has earned depth and dominance. Success spurs competition and there are plenty of would-be Ethereum killers, but we see the No. 2 crypto fending off challenges to its leadership."
