Solana Introduces Congestion Fix on Devnet Urging Validators to Upgrade Immediately

By: Eliza Bennet

The developers behind Solana have launched a new version of the validator client software in an effort to tackle serious congestion issues. The software improvement comes from Anza, a Solana Labs spinoff, with the objective to alleviate network congestion.

Being critical in proof-of-stake blockchains like Solana, validator clients verify and sanction each transaction to align with the network's rules while also confirming the fund sufficiency of the sender before adding new blocks to the blockchain.

The network has recently suffered from increased transaction drop rates and slower processing times due to spam transactions. Unlike typical blockchains, Solana processes transactions directly without a mempool, which further complicates its congestion problem.

The Solana community is eagerly anticipating the efficiency of the newly implemented fixes; external analyses have noted that congestion has adversely affected the network's performance, particularly because Solana serves as a significant hub for DeFi activities and the rising demand has compounded the congestion problem.