Solana outage triggers ballistic reaction from the crypto community

As the Solana network suffered another setback, crypto community members went on social media to express various concerns, even comparing the blockchain to other projects like Ethereum and Bitcoin. 

On Feb. 25, the Solana network faced performance degradation issues, resulting in transaction disruptions, leading validators to opt for a network restart. Seemingly tired of the same old story, community members expressed themselves on Twitter, with some even questioning Solana (SOL) as a top cryptocurrency.

Amid the network issues, nonfungible token (NFT) artist Crypto Tea questioned how the Solana blockchain made it to the top 10 list while having such performance issues. She tweeted:

Responding to the tweet, Solana Mobile developer Andrew Watson said they chose “security over liveness” and noted they are “in it for the long haul.“ In replying to Watson, another community member raised other concerns, such as putting decentralized finance protocols at risk of insolvency.

Community member commenting on the topic.

Other community members also started to compare Solana to Ethereum and Bitcoin. A community member highlighted in a Twitter thread that Ethereum went with the slow but sure route, while Solana chose to move fast while sometimes breaking. The Twitter user said that while Solana’s approach is riskier, it also paves the way for faster innovation. 

Twitter user questioning Solana’s status as an Ethereum killer.

Meanwhile, a Bitcoin (BTC) also pointed out how Bitcoin never needs a restart in the midst of Solana’s network issues. 

Related: Solana Spaces will close New York and Miami stores 7 months after opening

On Feb. 27, the Solana Foundation published a new update about the issue. According to the team, the Solana mainnet Beta was successfully restarted on Feb. 26, and “no confirmed user transactions were rolled back or impacted.“ However, the team highlighted that, at the moment, the root cause of the problem remains unknown and is still under investigation.

The Solana blockchain has met some notable outages through the years. In Sept. 2021, a major outage was caused by a denial-of-service attack by bots spamming Raydium. In May 2022, bots invaded the network, causing a seven-hour outage. In June 2022, a consensus failure due to a bug caused another outage, driving SOL’s price down.