The Solana network was back up again after a major outage that lasted about five hours due to performance degradation issues. The blockchain issued a patch and then asked Solana’s validators to upgrade to the new version and restart.
The halt in the network began at approximately 5:30am EST, according to Solana, with block production resuming at 10:57am EST. The blockchain said that core contributors to the network are working on a root cause report. The SOL token fell 3% after the news broke, dipping from $96.07 to $93.36 in a matter of minutes. It was recently trading at $94.83, up 0.7% over the last hour. The Solana blockchain hadn’t suffered an outage like this one since February 2023, when the network was halted for 18 hours and 50 minutes.
A new version of validator software, v1.17.20, was readied to address the root cause of the network’s halt.
Validator operators were advised to prepare for an imminent network upgrade and restart, following specific instructions provided by the Solana team. Validators, who play a critical role in maintaining the blockchain and processing transactions, then were tasked with implementing the patch and restarting their systems.
