- On April 4, Solana’s network encountered an unprecedented 75% failure rate in “non-vote” transactions, indicating severe strain under increased demand.
- Analysis reveals bots are responsible for a significant portion, 55%, of the swap transactions, amounting to $30.2 million.
- Despite facing operational challenges and a drop in SOL’s price, Solana looks towards imminent network upgrades as potential solutions.
Solana (SOL), often touted as Ethereum’s leading competitor, has been struggling under heavy demand. According to recent insights from Dune analytics, the network saw 75% of all its “non-vote” transactions fail on April 4.
This marked the highest percentage of failed transactions in the network to date. The insights, compiled by data analyst Scarn.eth, indicated that bots also accounted for 55% of the total swap count or $30.2 million of the total transaction volume.
“Non-vote” transactions are those that see SOL transferred between accounts within the Solana network. The poor performance of the network has drawn massive criticism, even though it was touted as “bot spam” by Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz.
It must be noted that when initially compiling this data, Scarn.eth had clarified that he “used rather forgiving parameters in measuring bots.” He had urged the community to take Solana’s transaction volume “with a bowl of salt.”
In response to the insights, Mumtaz added that the issue won’t be a “big problem” for users. That’s because user wallets simulate the transaction before initiation, letting users know beforehand the transaction will fail.
The recent hype around memecoins on the Solana network can be attributed to the increased trading activity. Trading bots are deployed to cash in on this by making arbitrage trades. However, when there is no arbitrage, the transaction fails.
Mumtaz went on to add that the failed transactions chart is “not a good way” to assess user impact on the network. Mumtaz argued that 95% of the chart is comprised of failed arbitrage attempts from trading bots. According to him, most users’ transactions don’t make it to the block.
Further, the Helius CEO highlighted that much of this bot activity transpires before the scheduling process is initiated. As such, he urged users not to increase transaction priority fees, adding that won’t help the case and calling it “waste.”
Mumtaz views “network patches,” or updates, that are expected to be rolled out soon as the only viable solution to this issue. However, he added that the upcoming 1.18 Solana upgrade might not be the one.
The problems with Solana were reflected in the price of SOL, which was down more than 5.5% at the time of publication, at $174.50. Despite its 45% rally last week, the token has been stumbling over the past week, down 6.4%. The token was also surpassed by Binance smart chain’s BNB as the fourth largest cryptocurrency.
