In recent weeks, several users of the Solana blockchain have reported a concerning amount of failed transactions: today, developers have released version 1.17.31 of a new crypto update, which aims to alleviate the high network traffic, greatly improving the user experience.
SOL in the meantime seems to have recovered some of the lost quotations during the crash on Saturday, April 13, and seems to want to start rising again.
All the details below.
Solana launches version 1.17.31 of the first crypto update aimed at reducing blockchain congestion
Following the report from the Solana community regarding numerous technical issues related to network congestion, the blockchain developers have responded by launching today the version 1.17.31 of a repair update.
This is specifically the first version of a long series of code improvements aimed at solving once and for all the limit of excessive computational load on network nodes, offering an optimal user experience.
The Solana Foundation has “recommended” to the validators operating on the mainnet to update their software.
The v1.17.31 release is now recommended for general use by MainnetBeta validators. This release contains enhancements which will help alleviate the ongoing congestion on the Solana Network.
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) April 15, 2024
The update in question, launched a few days ago in testnet thanks to the contribution of the Anza collective (manager of the Agave client), solves congestion problems thanks to the introduction of the SWQOS transaction priority definition scheme.
This, as described by Anza Rex St John’s developer relations manager, benefits tx coming from validators in staking classified as “good“.
This type of priority would prevent lower quality validators from maliciously flooding the network with unnecessary transactions.
These are his words in a post on X:
“Every time the network receives high traffic, you would like a way to prioritize good connections. The idea is that staking validators are incentivized to use connections to send useful transactions.”
This “fix” could bring optimism back to the Solana household, after the frenzy of memecoin led to a huge amount of failed transactions on the blockchain.
It is estimated that in March, in the midst of an 8-fold increase in on-chain volumes from the previous month (from 500 million to 4 billion dollars), about 7 out of 10 transactions did not go through successfully.
Contributing negatively to the technical difficulty, the maximum use of trading bots to exchange memecoins has been reported.
In the last few days, the rate of “Non-Vote Transactions” has dropped to around 57% but it could decrease drastically if the crypto update is completed smoothly.
We underline in this context the term “failed” to identify unsuccessful transactions on the Solana blockchain, it is imprecise in itself.
As user X “Dave Kayac” observes, these transactions have been successfully communicated to the validators (so they did not fail) but rather have been “rejected” due to other external factors.
It would not be a problem located at the infrastructure level but rather at the application level.
Anyway, the final result on the user experience front remains unchanged. The version 1.17.31 of the update could put an end to the headache.
Solana needs a different term for it’s “failed” transactions.
Too many people are interpreting this as the network itseld failing.
I proposed “rejected” instead.
The transaction was succesfully communicated to validators, but it was rejected due to slippage, priority, etc.
— Dave.R (@Dave_Kayac) February 6, 2024
Analysis of SOL crypto prices: quotes recovering after Saturday’s crash
While Solana’s blockchain developers try to solve the network congestion limit with an update to the mainnet, the SOL coin seems to want to resume its upward trend after the sharp slowdown marked over the weekend.
Specifically, on Saturday, April 13th, prices dropped by 9.59%, continuing the sell-off from the previous day that had caused prices to sharply break below the support of the EMA 50 daily.
Between yesterday and today, however, SOL managed to rise back above $150, fueling the hopes of the bulls to resume the positive rally.
It is worth noting the high trading volumes in these hectic days and the touch of the RSI14 in the 30 zone, which could signal the end of the retracement.
Now first of all there will be the need to recover the level of 160 dollars, and then consolidate above it and aim for 180 dollars and beyond.
Amidst the violent selling sessions, derivative markets have recorded heavy liquidations for traders who were long leveraged on SOL.
The data from Coinglass speaks for itself with about $77 million in long liquidations between April 12 and 13. Short liquidations are barely at $20 million between April 13 and 14.
We underline how since the beginning of the month the open interest on SOL has significantly decreased from 3.4 billion dollars to the current 2 billion dollars.
Even the funding rate has undergone a significant downsizing, going from the excessive value of 0.08% to the current value of 0.003% in just a few days, ready to turn negative if sales were to continue.
