Solana developers have recently unveiled a beta update, v1.17.31, for the Solana blockchain in order to address the persistent network congestion. Following three days of thorough testing, this update is now being recommended for general use by mainnet beta validators.
The v1.17.31 patch includes several enhancements that aim to alleviate the ongoing network congestion and will be followed by further improvements in the upcoming v1.18 update. The current version of the patch is expected to enhance the network congestion and address issues related to the sudden surge in open interest. Some of the key upgrades featured in the patch are as follows:
– Displaying staked versus non-staked packets sent down/throttled
– Utilizing smallvec to aggregate chunks in Quic, resulting in saving one allocation per packet
– Implementing the BankingStage Forwarding Filter
– Tightening the minimal streams per 100ms for staked nodes
– Treating super low staked nodes as unstaked in streamer QOS
– Setting the default staked client in LocalCluster
Solana developer Anza has advised validators to upgrade to the latest patch only if the delinquent stake is less than 5%. The term “delinquency” in Solana refers to inactive validators, and the percentage signifies the total stake held by offline validators. Therefore, validators are advised to install the updates only when the inactive validator stakes on the network are below 5%.
Amidst increasing network activity and the frenzy surrounding memecoins, the Solana network experienced congestion issues for nearly a week, with a transaction failure rate reaching as high as 75%. While developers were working on resolving the issue, a co-founder of Solana clarified that the ongoing network congestion problems were merely a bug rather than a network-wide issue.
The Solana Foundation attributed the current network congestion problems to various factors, such as a high demand for Solana block space and a delayed implementation of patches to address network-related issues. Austin Federa, the Solana Foundation’s strategy lead, informed Cointelegraph that developers had been tirelessly working to fix the problem, but the network demand has surpassed the timely intervention by developers. Federa added that the engineers had been working diligently, with little sleep, to prepare patches and test features before they were introduced to the mainnet.
Despite the challenges, Solana developers have devised a series of patches to tackle the ongoing issue, with the first patch being released to developers on April 15th.