Solana suffers network instability during brutal week for Crypto

Solana, one of the largest blockchain networks, was hit by instability during a turbulent week for cryptocurrencies.

The issue experienced by validators that use their computing power to help verify the network was caused by excessive duplicate transactions, according to a notice on the Solana website dated Jan. 22. Engineers have released version 1.8.14, which "will attempt to mitigate the worst effects of this issue," the notice said. It added that more improvements are expected to come out in the next eight to 12 weeks, and many of those features are being "rigorously tested."

"Solana mainnet beta is experiencing high levels of network congestion," the notice said. "The last 24 hours have shown these systems need to be improved to meet the demands of users, and support the more complex transactions now common on the network."

A tweet on an unverified account that was retweeted by Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko attributed the network's issues to "current market volatility," without giving further details. It's not Solana's first brush with instability: In September, for example, it suffered a 17-hour outage sparked by what it called "resource exhaustion."

Solana's troubles came amid a broad pullback in tokens from Bitcoin and Ether to Polkadot -- and Solana itself, which has plummeted more than 30% over the past seven days, according to pricing from CoinGecko. The cryptocurrency universe has lost about $1 trillion in market value from its highs, and Bitcoin is off almost 50% from a November record.

The smaller Avalanche blockchain has so far held up well under the recent stress, according to a tweet from Emin Gun Sirer, chief executive of Ava Labs, Avalanche's developer. "Chain performance was solid throughout," he said.