Solana Network Faces Near Freeze Due to Data Center Glitch

Routing Glitch Threatens Solana Stability

The Solana blockchain experienced a significant risk of freezing Wednesday morning following a routing failure at a major data center provider. This incident led to nearly 29% of the network’s staked tokens becoming temporarily offline, as reported by the staking platform Marinade Finance.

Impact on Staking and Validators

Staking, which involves locking coins within a blockchain network in exchange for rewards, faced severe disruptions. Marinade pointed out that the network came dangerously close to the threshold where more than a third of staked tokens going dark could prevent transaction finality. They indicated that the network was approximately 20 million tokens shy of this critical limit.

Approximately 90 validators experienced issues and collectively lost 333 SOL in rewards, a relatively minor amount that is expected to be covered by validator bonds. Marinade warned, “If delinquency had gone past a third, nothing finalizes for anyone holding SOL anywhere, and there’s no bond for that.” The last major freeze incident in February 2024 required about five hours to restore functionality.

Details of the Incident

The recent routing problem originated from a bad internet route at Teraswitch’s facility in Miami, impacting data centers in Europe and Asia. Validators located in cities such as London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore, and Tokyo were cut off, while those in North America remained unaffected. The issue was resolved in approximately ten minutes, and normal operations resumed by 4:16 a.m. UTC.

Notably, one single network operator held over a quarter of all tokens staked to secure the network, exceeding Solana’s prescribed safety limits. Most of the affected validators, including major player Helius, remained offline for the entire 33 minutes since their backup systems did not activate.

Warnings for the Future

This incident serves as a critical warning about the potential consequences of a substantial portion of the network’s tokens going offline simultaneously. Marinade cautioned that if the threshold is crossed, it could lead to a complete freeze of the blockchain, affecting all SOL holders without a straightforward recovery path.