Solana suffered the first outage of 2024, sparking discussions over the five-hour blackout. As developers and critics raged about the event, Matthew Sigel, CEO of digital asset research at VanEck, offered his insights. He highlighted that the BPF [Berkley Packet Filter] loader, which oversees deploying, upgrading, and executing programs on Solana, has crashed. He then made a stunning claim that someone manually triggered the bug, causing the network to come to a screeching halt.
Thankfully, he added that the bug was tracked down by developers and a fix was created, even though it had not yet been implemented. He stated that SOL developers have rewritten the BPF code lines to fix the bugs, meaning that the core software everyone runs must be patched. “Once it is patched, people can start running the software again,” he wrote.
As the crypto community debated the network woes, Sigel gave a glimpse of the next steps to restore the network to action. Validators step up to seek consensus on the last verified block. The network is finally back on track but is met with two scenarios: block production hangs in the balance until 66% of staked SOL validators give the thumbs up. The network resumes only when a majority of 80% agrees on the last block. It remains to be seen if the fix holds up or if Solana is headed for another meltdown.
Solana: Fix in Progress, But A Word Of Caution
Still, questions remain if this outage is a mere stumbling block on the road to innovation or if it is a sign of more turbulence ahead. Experts hint at ongoing debates over future SMIDs and changes to fee markets, suggesting a potential slowdown in Solana’s forward momentum. Sigel further anticipates a post-restart Defi frenzy, with arbitrage bots unleashing a vortex of activity estimated to be worth a whopping $25 million in MEV. However, the excitement comes with a cautionary note:
The activity from the MEV on restart may cause downtime again. This may slow down innovation on Solana as future SMIDs will be more heavily debated. The upcoming change to fee markets, which have been mired in deep debate, may be indicative of this dynamic.
After the network disruption, SOL fell to $93 but has subsequently recovered those losses and stabilized at $97.