Solana / April 2024
The very recent expressions of concern regarding Solana’s network congestion in the past weeks are in my opinion another case of misrepresentation and superficial engagement with the workings of blockchain technologies and crypto.
Most of the so-called “failed transactions” are in fact situation in which the blockchain rejects request for invalid operations due to lack of permissions, inadequate format, changes in the conditions of the market or spamming nature of the requests. Although it is obvious that Solana needs upgrades and adjustments in order to guarantee that the management of spam, bot and meme- related requests and operations does not disrupt the rest of (legitimate, core) activities, the correct reading of what is happening at the moment should be positive as it brings forth evidence of Solana’s blockchain capacity to identify and stop bot-controlled and spamming activity and proves its resilience.
Solana’s network is one of the pioneers in Parallel Transaction Execution, an approach that enables the splitting of tasks into pieces that can be handled simultaneously and thus increasing the overall transaction processing speed compared to that of first generation blockchains. Solana’s use of the parallel smart contract runtime ‘SeaLevel’ has made it possible for the blockchain to have one of the highest transaction processing speeds at a theoretical 65.000 transactions per second (10.000 times faster than Bitcoin and 4000 faster than Ethereum). Solana uses a unique mechanism called Tower BFT, which enables fast block confirmation times while maintaining network security and decentralization, and altogether the network is designed prioritising high throughput to deliver at high speeds and much lower cost per transaction than other networks, leading to its popularity. You don’t need to be an expert blockchain software engineer to understand that those conditions will attract bot and spamming activity, and Solana’s engineers and developers are already working to devise upgrades and protocols that will more effectively discriminate and divert these unwanted chunks of transaction activity.
Let’s keep learning while supporting the development of the technologies that will power and enable our future.
What do you think will be the price range of Solana for the rest of 2024?
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