The Solana mainnet has encountered a block production outage, leading to a halt in block progress while core engineers and validators work to resolve the issue. Confirming the downtime, the Solana blockchain explorer displayed a "critical outage" status on the mainnet. Users on social media noted the absence of block generation for over 25 minutes, significantly exceeding the typical 400 millisecond block generation time.
In response to the outage, Solana validator Stakewiz stated that developers are actively developing a version containing the necessary fix. Once the version is built and thoroughly tested, further instructions will be provided to validators. In preparation for the restart, validators have initiated the process of taking snapshots of the local ledger state.
Currently, validators are capturing a snapshot of slot 246464040 and ensuring the consistency of the bank hash for that specific slot. The Mainnet-Beta cluster will be restarted with version 1.17.20, with the jito-solana version also available. Validators are awaiting final confirmation from core engineers before proceeding. Snapshots serve as point-in-time representations of the global Solana state, ensuring no transaction rollbacks.
Solana has released version v1.17.20, with validators instructed to follow the provided GitHub instructions for upgrading and restarting. The network outage has begun to impact cryptocurrency exchanges, with Upbit announcing the suspension of deposits and withdrawals for Solana-based tokens such as Solana, GMT (GMT), Raydium (RAY), and Access Protocol (ACS). This outage marks the eleventh instance of network or block production issues faced by the Solana blockchain since its launch in March 2020.
Despite its focus on providing scalable solutions for decentralized ecosystems to compete with Ethereum, the Solana network has faced recurring challenges. Despite its increasing prominence during the 2021 bull cycle, characterized by rising adoption and token prices, Solana has grappled with persistent network-related issues, necessitating multiple network restarts by developers.
