Solana Community Grants Validators All Priority Fees

On May 27, the Solana community cast their votes to allocate 100% of priority fees to network validators; the proposal was approved with 77% support.

Previously, priority fees within the Solana network were divided equally between compensating its validators and fueling the network's token-burning process.

Since the close of 2023, Solana's market value has surged significantly. The token peaked at around $210 in March 2024 and is presently valued at approximately $171.

Despite its robust market performance, Solana continues to face challenges with network congestion and multiple crashes, resulting in at least four downtimes.

The first significant crash happened in September 2021, when an influx of bots overwhelmed the network, leading to a 17-hour outage.

Just four months after, in December, the network suffered another crash due to high user activity. Later that month, a token sale for the game SolChick once again overwhelmed the network with congestion.

In 2023, Solana underwent another significant outage, this time triggered by high traffic levels.

Initially, validators attributed the disruption to an update in the validator software; however, reverting to an earlier software version did not solve the issue.

The validators ultimately had to manually reboot the network using the most stable version of the software, after which normal operations were restored.

Following these repeated outages, Solana’s developers assured the community of forthcoming bug fixes and improvements to the blockchain, though they did not dismiss the possibility of future disruptions.

Such outages are seemingly inherent to networks handling high volumes of transactions.

According to CoinGecko, the Solana blockchain has reached unprecedented transaction speeds, recording a high of 1,504 transactions per second (TPS) on April 6, 2024.

This positions Solana as the fastest blockchain, significantly surpassing the transaction speed of Ethereum’s layer-1, as it seeks to maintain both reliability and high transaction capacity.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-community-votes-giving-validators-all-priority-fees

https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-validators-vote-to-allocate-100-priority-fees-to-validators/