Solana’s growing popularity has come with a significant challenge – network congestion. However, Anza, a collective of Solana-focused developers, has announced that it is actively working to mitigate these issues and plans to release patches as soon as next week.
According to Dune Analytics, a staggering 70% of non-voting transactions proposed on the Solana blockchain are currently failing, significantly limiting the network’s operability. Solana wallets like Phantom have started displaying messages to users, warning them about potential delays or failed transactions.
Anza has identified the root cause of the congestion, linking it to issues with a specific implementation of QUIC, a widely used internet transport protocol. Additionally, the behavior of Agave, Anza’s Solana validator client, when processing numerous requests may also be contributing to the problem.
Developers at Anza have been making improvements and promised to ship more in the coming months. This includes an upcoming update to the Agave client, which will incorporate changes to its central scheduler, “dedicated to minimizing conflicting transactions by routing and ordering incoming tx to worker threads to minimize conflicts and improve block packing.”
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has acknowledged the challenges posed by congestion bugs, explaining that resolving these issues is more complex than addressing total liveness failures, as it requires a full release and testing pipeline.
The Solana Foundation addressed the congestion problem last month, providing a list of recommendations to help users and app developers navigate the current woes. With Anza’s commitment to delivering patches and improvements, the Solana community is hopeful that the network’s performance will soon be restored.
