The Solana blockchain experienced a sudden forking event early today, significantly reducing the network’s processing capacity and hindering users’ ability to execute transactions, according to a report.
Before the forking event, the network was processing around 5,000 transactions per second, but this dropped to a mere 93 TPS 15 minutes later, rendering most on-chain activities, such as trading and asset transfers, impossible.
The cause of the forking event is currently unknown, but Solana’s validator operators, Solana Labs, and the Solana Foundation are working together to find a solution.
Solana’s Priority Fees Gain Popularity Despite Recent Network Issues
Meanwhile, despite the recent issues faced by the Solana network, users are paying more than ever to use the platform due to the popularity of priority fees. These fees allow users to prioritize their transactions and ensure that they go through faster.
The extra boost can be crucial in high-traffic situations, such as when there is a fleeting crypto-trading arbitrage opportunity or when trying to mint a hot non-fungible token (NFT).
Priority fees have been growing in adoption all year, with heavyweights like exchange aggregator Jupiter and trading pool operator Orca joining in.
In the latest epoch (the blockchain’s time period for validators), nearly three-quarters of all non-vote transactions had priority fees attached, setting a new high watermark for priority fee adoption.
Despite a 67% increase in rates from early July, Solana users paid an average transaction fee of only 0.000014641 SOL during that epoch, which translates to just a fraction of a penny based on the current market price.
Users can pay up to 100x for the current costs and not care, according to 7Layer, which runs the Overclock validator service.
The priority fees are helping bring order to a network that has experienced its fair share of chaos, most memorably and infamously due to trading bots that spammed the network into oblivion in 2021.
Developers are confident that such incidents should not happen under the new tech regime, and the growing popularity of priority fees is a testament to that.
Although the current issues with the Solana network have caused concern, it is clear that users are still willing to pay a premium to use the platform.
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