Solana, a contemporary blockchain and one of the leading smart contract platforms, has reached an impressive achievement according to a screenshot shared by an observer on X.
In the last seven months, the platform has consistently maintained an extraordinary uptime of 100%, countering criticism that has followed the network since its inception.
Solana Has Experienced 7 Consecutive Months of Uptime
With this accomplishment, Solana is nearing the record for the longest uninterrupted operation period. This achievement underscores the advancements made in ensuring the platform’s stability and reliability. Like Ethereum and other public ledgers, Solana is theoretically intended to uphold a high uptime of over 99.9% given its architecture.
A globally distributed network of validators powers Solana. This means that even if disruptions occur in certain regions, such as mass validator withdrawals, the network will continue functioning through the remaining nodes. Although ideally designed this way, the reality has been different, particularly for the latest blockchain models that aim for high throughput and low transaction fees.
Since its launch, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and numerous other legacy chains have been dependable and operational. However, Solana has faced challenges, especially during spikes in on-chain transactions, which have tested the limits of its online nodes.
Despite the recent improvements, Solana has experienced several problematic outages, particularly in 2023. Each time the network went down, analysts raised concerns about its resilience and questioned whether it could genuinely be classified as a blockchain.
Earlier this year, in February 2024, Solana encountered a failure that caused its nodes to cease transaction processing. This outage was attributed to a software flag, but the issue was promptly addressed.
Firedancer Will Improve Reliability
To address these issues and rebuild trust, the team has been actively focusing on increasing reliability. Significant resources and efforts are dedicated to refining Solana’s infrastructure, to ensure the platform remains operational, regardless of on-chain activity.
Jump Crypto has been diligently developing Firedancer, a validator client that introduces a modular framework. Once launched in 2025, it is expected to enhance transaction processing efficiency and significantly lower the risk of network outages.
Firedancer is expected to introduce several enhancements, including the ability to process transactions in parallel, which will further increase throughput while reducing latency.
Feature image from Canva, chart from TradingView
