Solana, a blockchain platform that promises high throughput and low fees, has come under fire in recent weeks for a series of outages that have raised concerns about its reliability.
However, Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko has explained that the outages were not due to a design flaw but rather to the platform’s unique approach to security and performance.
The discussion started when DBCryptoX, an entrepreneur and content creator, tweeted that Solana had experienced another 20-hour outage. It was just one of about a dozen times the platform had gone down, prompting DBCryptoX to question the design flaw behind the outages.
However, Yakovenko responded by explaining that the outages were not due to any design flaw but rather to the platform’s need for high levels of network communication for validation.
He explained how the conventional Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus algorithm necessitates a quadratic increase in messaging overhead. It implies that as the number of nodes in a quorum grows, the network must handle a greater number of messages.
Why Solana Implements Votes As Transactions
Solana has implemented a 2800-node quorum to deal with the high network communication required. If the 66% quorum consisting of 150 nodes attempts to produce an invalid state transition or withhold information from the network, any of the remaining 2650 nodes will quickly identify the issue.
Yakovenko explained that the large quorum and fast block times are generally good, providing high security and low latency performance for users. However, the 9 million messages the system requires are a lot, so Solana has implemented a highly optimized pipeline to handle all of the votes.
It is why votes are not just counted as transactions but are literally implemented as transactions. This is because there is no cheaper way to get votes from all the nodes in the network. Solana implements one highly optimized pipeline for all messages that must be fully replicated to all nodes.
Yakovenko emphasized that other networks do not provide the same security or performance level because their quorums are small, and consensus rounds are measured in seconds. Solana’s unique approach allows it to provide exceptional levels of security, high throughput, and low fees simultaneously.
Nevertheless, Yakovenko’s explanation of Solana’s unique approach to security and performance sheds light on the platform’s design and why it has experienced recent outages.
However, it also highlights the platform’s potential to provide exceptional levels of security, high throughput, and low fees, making it a platform to watch in the coming months.
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