Solana plans to improve its blockchain: Here’s how

Published at: March 1, 2023

The Solana network experienced a noticeable slowdown in block production after its most recent 1.14 network update on Feb. 25, as it went into reset mode. As an immediate response to transaction disruptions, validators downgraded the software to up performance levels.

However, on Feb. 28, Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs, released another statement as to how the ecosystem plans to improve its recent network upgrades. The major focus of the plan is on stability as the network continues its transition.

2022 priorities were shipping new features and new tools. 2023 is stability. Tldr 1/3 of core eng is going to be focused on stability and adversarial testing. Here’s my thoughts. https://t.co/Z6pR9hhYbP

— toly (@aeyakovenko) March 1, 2023

The statement laid out a 6-step plan for engineers to follow to help streamline the process and revealed that an adversarial team has been formed which comprises one-third of the Solana engineering team.

This team was formed in order to build additional hooks and instrumentation into the validator code, along with targeting exploits throughout the underlying protocols.

Additionally, it laid out ways in which it will focus on creating network-wide stability. This includes a second validator client being built by Jump Crypto’s Firedancer team, Mango DAO developers building new tooling and implementing local fee markets, among other efforts.

Yakovenko’s recent statement also mentioned that an investigation as to what exactly happened in the initial outage is still being conducted, and the community will be informed when information is available.

On Feb. 28 he clarified that on-chain voting was not the cause of the slowdown.

The community response to the outage was one of frenzy, with some users calling the system a “transaction killer.” However, the response to Yakovenko's improvement roadmap was mixed with some users saying the news was “great to hear,” while others still questioned Solana’s integrity:

your testing process failed at each major releases. do you have at least a real testing process ? not sure.Simple question : Who is responsible for the global testing/release coordination until now ? you ? raj ? ...it's not serious

— trueconnoisseur.eth (@VicThor2013) March 1, 2023

The Solana ecosystem call is planned for Mar. 2, 2023 in which it plans to discuss the state of the ecosystem, among other things.

Later in the month, on Mar. 27, the communications protocol Helium Network has plans to migrate to the Solana blockchain to deploy oracles.