TechFlow reported on September 3 that Solana Foundation Executive Director Dan Albert responded to recent questions about the centralization of the Solana network at the Korea Blockchain Week Roundtable. These questions stem from the coordinated deployment of a critical vulnerability patch on August 9. Albert explained that the patch was designed to fix a security vulnerability that could cause "activity issues" on the Solana mainnet.
Solana validator Laine once revealed that this vulnerability could cause the network to paralyze. Since the patch distribution process is confidential and the coordination is done behind the scenes to prevent attackers from reverse engineering the vulnerability and destroying the network, this has caused some people to question the degree of decentralization of Solana. Albert emphasized that the ability to coordinate patches should not be confused with centralization. He pointed out: "Solana has 1,500 block production nodes spread across the world, operated by almost the same number of individuals." While acknowledging that some companies operate multiple nodes, Albert said that communication with node operators stems from the activity of these people in the community and ecosystem.
This is not the first time Solana has faced accusations of centralization. In 2022, a community member claimed that a small number of people had the influence to shut down and restart the network. However, Unstoppable Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) company based on Solana, refuted the allegations, saying that Solana has a higher number of validators than other blockchains and is actually more decentralized than people think.
