The Solana mainnet, also known as “mainnet-beta,” experienced a major outage that halted all activity on the chain at approximately 5:30 am ET. This required a network restart, during which engineers responded with a validator software patch to allow for an upgrade to version 1.17.20. Most validators were using earlier versions, but the network restart was successfully completed, and work is now underway to restart dapps on the network and assess the downstream effects.
As a result of the outage, the price of Solana (SOL) fell by 3% to $93.39 but has since recovered 2% to trade at $95.14 as of 10:30 am ET. This marks the latest in a series of major outages experienced by Solana, which had previously suffered similar incidents in February 2023, June 2022, and September 2021. Despite the challenges, Solana had remained in continuous operation for almost a year before this latest outage.
The network restart and successful upgrade to version 1.17.20 have allowed the chain to start moving again, but efforts are now focused on restarting dapps on the network and evaluating the impact of the interruption. The recovery of SOL’s price also suggests that confidence in the network is being restored, but it remains to be seen how the latest outage will impact Solana’s reputation and long-term performance.