After its recent attack in September, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was purportedly launched on Solana’s blockchain over the last 24 hours the attack temporarily clogged the network, although the network appears to be unaffected.
A DDoS attack is when a botnet or a large number of coordinated devices flood a network with bogus traffic in order to knock it offline.
This isn’t the first time Solana has experienced a network outage; in September, reports showed the network was down for 17 hours owing to significant botting activity for an initial DEX offering (IDO) on Solana-based DEX platform Raydium.
Solana-based platforms speak on the attack
Blockasset, a Solana-based NFT platform, revealed the latest DDoS attack on December 9 around 3 p.m. UTC, after noting that:
“We are aware tokens are taking a long time to distribute. The Solana chain is being overloaded with DDoS attacks which have clogged the network causing delays.”
GenesysGo, a Solana-based infrastructure provider, also reported on the issue, noting that the validator network was having trouble processing transaction requests, but that the issue was due to “growing pains.”
This morning, the #Solana validator network is having problems. As the network struggles to process transaction requests, TPS concerns arise.
The #Solana validator network is experiencing issues this morning. TPS issues as the network works to process txn requests.
Remember, this is blockchain If your txn ID went through then it’s not lost, just pending. Growing pains is all! pic.twitter.com/2Zfagq092M— GenesysGo.sol – Shadowy Super Coder DAO (@GenesysGo) December 9, 2021
The nature of the problem is unknown at this time because the Solana Foundation has yet to officially confirm any attacks, while Status.Solana states that the network is fully working at the time of writing.
Solana users also complained of the attack
However, many Twitter accounts claimed that Solana was down globally, with Verbit CEO Roy Murphy (and BSV supporter) declaring that “Solana crashed again and is currently unavailable.” Engineers are investigating the possibility of rebooting the system.’ You can’t possibly make this stuff up!”
Members of the r/Solana subreddit earlier today blamed the network congestion on another Raydium IDO launch, with user “u/Psilodelic” publishing a post headlined “Why do Raydium IDOs clog the Solana network and what is being done about it?”
“My biggest concern about Solana right now is the performance impact during high volume activity connected to Raydium IDOs and launches. Literally every single performance issue in the past 6 months, including the 17-hour outage, has been a result of a launch on Raydium,” they wrote.
In response, one of the group’s moderators, “Laine sa,” didn’t specifically confirm if the Solana network’s troubles were once again Raydium-related, but did highlight that since the DDoS attack in September, there had been concerted “stop gaps” placed in place to keep Solana online:
“Right now there’s a stop-gap in place that prioritizes vote transactions to prevent a full crash, there are additional changes to compute limits and fees relating to this in the works but it’s not a quick fix that can be rolled out in a few weeks which is why it’s taking time. It’s being looked at however.”
Solana (SOL) has dropped 6.4 percent in the last 24 hours, sitting at $182.79 as of this writing. SOL has dropped 26.1 percent in the last 30 days, despite a retracement in most of the main crypto assets.
