Solana is experiencing hardships as developers have begun abandoning the project for greener pastures. The network has had a host of problems ranging from network outages and exploits to FTX bankruptcy exposure.
Is this the next network to implode after Terra Luna?
Solana’s Many Hardships
Since Solana’s inception, the network has had five recorded outages. The co-founder of the network notes that there have been times when the network was still running but was unusable due to high traffic. While high traffic is good for your network, not being able to handle it – five times – is not good news.
The longest Solana outage lasted 17 hours, in September 2021.
Even before the FTX saga, the price of SOL was taking a huge dump. One of the main attractions of developers to Solana was the immense support they had from SBF, Alameda Research, and FTX Ventures.
FTX would invest in promising Solana projects, list them on their exchange immediately upon launch, and pump the price of these projects through Alameda Research. An increase in the price of the projects led to an overall swell in the TVL of the Solana ecosystem and also SOL.
Now with SBF gone, there is no one to pump their bags. Considering the negative reputation Solana has, there is no good reason (incentive) to continue building on this chain.
Solana Remains Optimistic
Well, this is certainly not true. Daily active developers on Solana have declined by 90% since January 2022, according to Token Terminal, even though Solana devs have come out to disagree with this data.
Jac0xb had this to say:
“These numbers are garbage. Ethereum only has 250 developers LOL? Solana only has 75 LOL? Maybe you’re just misconstruing “active developers” with developers working on the blockchain repo.”
Despite these disagreements, Solana continues to experience more exploits as the latest one hits Raydium. Raydium, a Solana-based DEX was exploited for over $2M about a week ago. Additionally, Cairo, the new Ethereum Layer 2 coding language has just surpassed Solana’s Rust in terms of TVL.
To add salt to the injury, on Dec. 26, 2022, Solana’s top NFT projects, DeGods and y00ts abandoned the network for Polygon and Ethereum.
Solana is headed for an implosion. The current price of SOL stands at $9.95 today, an 11% drop in the last 24 hours and a 93% crash from its all-time high. Furthermore, the TVL on Solana is down more than 80% from $10B. These are hard times for the network and investors should tread cautiously. This is what RomeoTrades thinks about Solana investors:
Vincent Munene is a freelance writer and a great blockchain enthusiast. Blockchain has changed his life in terms of financial freedom and in return, he likes to educate people and keep them up to date on everything blockchain. He is a Biochemist by profession and also loves to play the piano.
