Solana Blockchain suffers from “Long Forking Event” which limits transaction processing speeds

The Solana blockchain experienced a sudden fork event early today, significantly reducing the network’s processing capacity and hindering users’ ability to conduct transactions, according to a report.

Before the forking event, the network was processing around 5,000 transactions per second, but this dropped to just 93 TPS 15 minutes later, making most on-chain activities, such as trading and asset transfers, impossible.

The cause of the forking incident is currently unknown, but Solana’s validator operators, Solana Labs, and the Solana Foundation are working together to find a solution.

Solana’s priority charging is gaining popularity despite recent network issues

Meanwhile, despite the recent problems facing the Solana network, users are paying more than ever to use the platform due to the popularity of priority fees. These fees allow users to prioritize their transactions and ensure they go through faster.

That extra boost can be crucial in high-traffic situations, such as when there is a volatile crypto trading arbitrage opportunity or when trying to create a hot non-fungible token (NFT).

Priority fees have grown in use throughout the year, with heavyweights such as exchange aggregator Jupiter and trading pool operator Orca joining the ranks.

In the last epoch (blockchain’s time period of validators), nearly three-quarters of all non-voting transactions had priority fees attached, setting a new high watermark for adoption of priority fees.

Despite a 67% increase in prices since the beginning of July, Solana users paid an average transaction fee of only 0.000014641 SOL during that era, which is only a fraction of a penny based on the current market price.

Users can pay up to 100x the current cost and not care, according to 7Layer, which runs the Overclock validator service.

The priority fees help bring order to a network that has seen its fair share of chaos, most memorably and infamously due to trading bots that spammed the network into oblivion in 2021.

Developers are confident that such incidents should not happen under the new technological regime, and the growing popularity of priority fees is proof of that.

Although the current problems with the Solana network have caused concern, it is clear that users are still willing to pay a premium to use the platform.

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