SOL Plunges as Solana Network Transfer Failure Rate Surges Past 76%

Solana (SOL) experienced a significant surge in transaction failure rates, with data from Dune Analytics showing that as much as 76.8% of “non-vote” transactions by users failed on Friday, April 5.

The high failure rate has been attributed to a deluge of activity brought by the recent memecoin mania on Solana, with users reporting failed transactions and a degraded user experience. However, Solana proponents argue that the data is being widely misinterpreted. 

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, claimed that the vast majority of failed non-vote transactions were simply “bot spam”, calling it a “tragedy of the commons”. 

He further explained Solana’s problem, noting, “the networking stack (QUIC) on Solana is implemented poorly and does not handle spam well. If everyone spams, a lot of connections get dropped since a block leader can only handle so many connections at once – bots spam better than humans, so users get the worst end of the stick and get dropped the most – to win.”

The pundit further suggested that networking patches are the solution, noting that increasing fees won’t help. He also added that about 95% of Dune’s entire chart is just bots failing arbitrage attempts. He, however, hinted that user experience on Solana could remain degraded for some time, with the upcoming 1.18 Solana network upgrade unlikely to fix these issues.

Elsewhere Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko expressed his frustration at the process of improving congestion bugs on the network, stating that “dealing with congestion bugs sucks so much more than total liveness failure.”

“The latter is one and done, bug is identified and patched and chain continues. the former has to go through the full release and test pipeline. Shipping fast is impossible,” added Yakovenko. 

That said, the incident caused a sudden drop in SOL’s price, with the crypto asset dipping just over 6% by Friday noon.

Notably, the Solana network has been plagued by several issues in recent months, causing concern among users and investors. The latest predicament comes after a network outage in February caused by a bug. However, a patch was deployed to fix the issue following a total downtime of approximately five hours.

At press time, SOL traded at $175, with a high transaction failure rate of 76.4%.