Solana Back Online Again After Suffering 5-Hour Outage – Unchained

Solana mainnet halted due to a performance issue, with a new software update in the pipeline for validators.

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.

Block production on Solana mainnet beta resumed at 14:57 UTC, following a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators. Engineers will continue to monitor performance as network operations are restored.

The outage began at approximately…

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 6, 2024

The halt in the network began at approximately 09:53 UTC, according to Solana, with block production resuming at 14:57 UTC. The blockchain said that core contributors to 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. 

UPDATE (Feb. 6 10:31 a.m. ET): Updated with information about Solana coming back online.