Solana Takes Action to Address Congestion Issues with New Update
In a bid to tackle the congestion issues plaguing its network, Solana has rolled out a new update to its validator client software. The update, version 1.17.31, was announced by Anza, a spinoff from Solana Labs, and aims to combat the problems caused by spam transactions that have been slowing processing times and increasing transaction drop rates on the Solana network.
The key feature of the update is the introduction of stake-weighted quality of service (SWQOS), a prioritization scheme designed to handle transactions from staked validators more efficiently. According to Tim Garcia, validator relations lead at the Solana Foundation, SWQOS essentially gives certain connections more reliable performance on the network, with 80% of connections reserved for quality of service and the remaining 20% available for general use.
Anza emphasized the importance of the update in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating that the release contains enhancements to alleviate ongoing network congestion. Solana Status also recommended the update for general use by MainnetBeta validators, highlighting its potential to ease congestion on the Solana network.
Representatives from Anza further elaborated on the significance of widespread adoption of the update, noting that the impact of the improvements to SWQOS should scale with the breadth of adoption. They urged validators to keep delinquency under 5% while upgrading and teased more updates in the pipeline.
The update, detailed on GitHub, includes technical enhancements such as adjustments in how staked and non-staked packets are managed and improvements to the BankingStage Forwarding Filter, essential for network operations efficiency.
Solana’s ability to manage high transaction loads without a traditional mempool has come under scrutiny, but the development community remains optimistic that these updates, along with future improvements, will significantly address these issues and enhance network stability and performance.
At the time of writing, SOL was trading at $150. The Solana community eagerly awaits the impact of this update on network congestion and overall performance.
