Solana developers have rolled out a mainnet beta update, v1.17.31, aimed at mitigating the persistent network congestion on the Solana blockchain.
Released on April 12, this update has undergone three days of rigorous testing and is now recommended for general use by mainnet beta validators.
The v1.17.31 release is now recommended for general use by MainnetBeta validators. This release contains enhancements which will help alleviate the ongoing congestion on the Solana Network.
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) April 15, 2024
The primary goal of this patch is to alleviate network congestion issues and prepare for further enhancements in the upcoming v1.18 release.
Key upgrades in this version include:
- Improved visibility of staked vs. non-staked packets sent down/throttled.
- Utilization of smallvec to aggregate chunks in Quic, reducing allocations per packet.
- Introduction of a BankingStage Forwarding Filter.
- Adjustment of minimal streams per 100ms for staked nodes.
- Treating super low staked nodes as unstaked in streamer Quality of Service (QoS).
- Defaulting staked client in LocalCluster.
Solana developer Anza has advised validators to implement the latest patch only when the delinquent stake is less than 5% of the total stake. Delinquency in Solana refers to inactive validators, with the percentage representing the offline validator stakes.
Notably, Solana has been experiencing network congestion amid increased activity and the surge in memecoin trading. The transaction failure rate spiked to 75% during this period. Despite this, Solana co-founder emphasized that the congestion was a bug rather than a fundamental network issue.
The Solana Foundation attributed the congestion to factors such as high demand for block space and delayed implementation of patches. Austin Federa, Solana Foundation strategy lead, highlighted the non-stop efforts of engineers to address the issue, including extensive patch development and testing.
To tackle ongoing issues, Solana developers have released a series of patches, with the first set available to developers on April 15. These efforts aim to stabilize the network and improve overall performance for Solana users.
