Solana developers have unveiled a new update, v1.17.31, for the mainnet beta version in order to address the persistent network congestion on the Solana blockchain. After three days of rigorous testing, the update is now being recommended for general use by mainnet beta validators. This patch includes several enhancements that will alleviate the network congestion, with further improvements expected in the upcoming v1.18 update.
The current version aims to tackle network congestion and issues related to the sudden surge in open interest. Key upgrades featured in the update include the ability to differentiate between staked and non-staked packets sent down/throttled, the utilization of smallvec to aggregate chunks in quic, thereby saving one allocation per packet, the implementation of a BankingStage Forwarding Filter, the tightening of the minimal streams per 100ms for staked nodes, the treatment of super low staked nodes as unstaked in streamer QOS, and the inclusion of a default staked client in LocalCluster.
Solana developer Anza has advised validators to upgrade to the latest patch only when the delinquent stake is less than 5%. In the context of Solana, delinquency refers to inactive validators, and the percentage refers to the total stake for offline validators. Hence, validators are urged to install the updates only if the network has less than 5% inactive validator stakes.
Amidst the growing network activity and the frenzy surrounding memecoins, the Solana network encountered congestion issues for nearly a week, resulting in a transaction failure rate as high as 75%. While developers were diligently working on finding a solution, Solana co-founder emphasized that the ongoing network congestion problems were merely a bug and not a fundamental network issue.
The Solana Foundation attributed the current network congestion problems to various factors, including a high demand for Solana block space and a delayed implementation of patches to address network-related issues. Austin Federa, the strategy lead at Solana Foundation, informed Cointelegraph that developers have been tirelessly working to resolve the issue, but the network demand has outpaced the timely intervention of developers.
However, Solana developers have successfully developed a series of patches to combat the ongoing issue, with the first patch being released earlier today for developers to implement.
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