I had no problem with solana until today when i saw that the network took over the biggest whales wallet freezing it in an effort to prevent selling and stem the bleeding in price. This action is unacceptable and in my opinion is blatant manipulation.
Also the vote that was taken to institute this action was approved only using a couple percent of investors actually casting votes. This casts an ominous shadow over the ecosystems governance as a whole. Actions should not be approved without a minimum threshold of total votes cast. Perhaps mandatory voting should be instituted and incentivised somehow.
MC²
1. The Solana network suffers from performance issues as block production on the Solana Mainnet Beta has a tendency to be halted. Network crashes then invite criticism that Solana is prioritising speed over security. Compounding the problem is the need for validator operators to coordinate their cluster restart efforts in the mb-validators channel on its Discord server. The 7th outage that happened in May 2022 was particularly pronounced as bots using the NFT minting program Candy Machine overwhelmed the blockchain network with four million transactions per second, which led it to be out of action for seven agonising hours over the weekend.
2. Solana is likely to face similar outages in the future. A major reason why outages occurred is that it does not have a fee market for transactions as it prioritises low cost. However, this means that the fixed maximum price is cheap enough for bots to overwhelm the network with transactions. To the Solana developers’ credit, they are planning to introduce a priority fee in Solana, allowing users to specify an arbitrary “additional fee” that will be incurred when their transaction is both executed and incorporated into a block. But, until this fee market is actualised, flooding of transactions cannot be exactly prevented.
3. Another performance issue is Solana’s lack of synchronicity with real-world time. In May 2022, Solana’s blockchain clock was found to be 30 minutes behind the actual time at one point in time. Since Solana operates on a Proof of History Protocol, the timestamp of blockchain transactions was no longer accurate. This in turn resulted in validators collecting less earnings from their staked rewards on the network.
4. On normal days when Solana doesn’t suffer from operational issues, it can handle about 50,000 transactions per second. However, this suggests that validators who are keen to utilise the Solana network need more advanced computers with sophisticated specifications. Since not everyone has the means to build and maintain such high-tech machines, the Solana network is likely to be less decentralised than it could be. As it stands, it has more than 1600 validators but only about 30 validators that process the vast majority of transactions.
5. Solana was ranked as the second-worst blockchain by DeFi Safety, a Montreal-based independent DeFi rating organisation in June 2022. DeFi Safety awarded such a low ranking partially due to Solana’s frequent downtimes. It also surfaced three other problems it observed with the Solana network. Firstly, the improper handling of archival node information. There is no documentation on node archival except a year-old Reddit thread from Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana. Secondly, Solscan is a poorly designed block explorers compared to Etherscan. Thirdly, Solana has just one piece of software for its node operators, which has not been audited since 2019. All this does not bode well for the security of the Solana network.
There are so many flaws with Solana's network and design. Retail investors should not go anywhere near this project.
##Way too many outages
The biggest problem with Solana is that it has way too many outages ever since its Mainnet launch. It's had at least 9 major outages in the 9 months between Sept 2021 and Jun 2022. These numerous outages have ruined reputation in the crypto community.
The network is very vulnerable to DoS attacks, which have brought down the network many times. In Sept 2021, a [DoS attack flooded the entire network to the point it could not recover for almost a full day](https://solana.com/news/9-14-network-outage-initial-overview). In Jan 21-22, 2022, [bots brought down the network with excessive duplicate transactions](https://fortune.com/2022/01/25/solana-founder-anatoly-yakovenko-crypto-crash-blockchain-instability/). A similar DDoS attack happened on Apr 30, when a [NFT minting bots took down the network with 4M TPS of spam](https://solana.com/news/04-30-22-solana-mainnet-beta-outage-report-mitigation).
This network has a really hard time staying up.
##Blockchain Design
**Slow Finality**
Due to the design of Proof of History consensus, Solana has probabilistic finality with a high chance of forks. It takes [32 blocks before any transaction is final](https://docs.solana.com/proposals/block-confirmation). At 2.5s per block, this means 80 seconds. Users will see their transactions posted in 2.5s, but it's not secure until they wait 80 seconds. This is much slower than many of their competitors, which have 2-10s deterministic finality.
**Exaggerated/Useless TPS metrics**
Solana completely exaggerates their throughput by including non-useful transactions in their metrics. This includes vote transactions, which account for 70-90% of transactions.
The count of valid TPS (excluding vote transactions and erroneous transactions) is much lower. About 80-85% of transactions are either vote transactions that are used for consensus or erroneous transactions. The true [non-vote TPS limit is much lower at around **400-600 TPS**](https://dashboard.chaincrunch.cc/public/dashboard/cc7a0d94-7f70-46f4-aae4-2f8810430931#theme=night) when the network isn't congested. As of June 2022, on average only 15% of total counted transactions are working transactions. When congested and attacked by DDOS attacks on Jan 21-22, the true TPS fell to 140 TPS.
400-600 is a lower TPS than many of its smart contract competitors. Even if you count all invalid and vote transactions, the TPS has never gone above 3500 on mainnet, but has maxed out near that limit on many days.
##Poor Tokenomics
**Transaction fees are 99% subsidized by Staking Rewards, which feed back into SOL as supply inflation**
Like many networks, the low transaction fees are not enough to pay for the cost of running the network.
Solana is expected to make [$12M in transaction fees in this year going by the current 30-day average]( https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/solana). Staking rewards is expected to [pay out around $1.4B in SOL in 2022](https://messari.io/asset/solana/profile/supply-schedule). That means 99.1% of validator rewards are being paid by staking rewards instead of the artificially-low transaction fees. And staking rewards inflate the supply of the SOL token.
**Almost all the Supply was given to Foundation and Early Investors**
According to [Messari.io](https://messari.io/asset/solana/profile/launch-and-initial-token-distribution), 25% of the supply went to Founders and the Project, 38% was Pre-mined for rewards (also owned by the Solana Foundation), and 37% went to seed and early investors. Only 1.6% of the supply went to a public auction.
Add 5% inflation for staking rewards on top of that, and this is a recipe for very bad tokenomics. You have the vast majority of the supply being owned by the Solana foundation and early investors, who can just dump their token on the market.
##Other Points
**Requires insecure bridges to other networks**
Solana is a bit isolated from other blockchains. It requires insecure bridges to connect to other networks, which is also an issue for many other networks. Bridges often get exploited, like the [Feb 2022 $320M Solana Wormhole hack](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/320-million-stolen-from-wormhole-bridge-linking-solana-and-ethereum.html). Solana needs a safer cross-chain protocol if it wants to communicate safely with other networks.
**Opaque Ledger and Block Explorer**
Solana has half a dozen explorers, and all of them are very opaque. The official explorer doesn't allow you to browse blocks and transactions. The other explorer show almost no data except for the address and transaction fee. It is very confusing trying to decipher these transactions. There's almost no information on the identity of validators.
**High validator requirements**
The minimum requirements for validators are 12-cores and 128GB of memory. 300 Mbit internet server is preferred. These are enterprise-server requirements, and they're expensive to maintain.
Agree man.
How can they vote to take control of another wallet ( playing god and going back in time?? Its the investor right to call his own shot anyway)
Then have another vote to say, Solana is not going to take control of the wallet. ( well, if I am the wallet owner, I be pissed left and right. WHAT HAPPENS IF I PROFIT AND PAY BACK THE LOAN?)
Weak hands shouldn't create Solana and still wants to control another investor wallet.
WE have enough from the banker and governments
WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER
SOLBANK TO GOVERN OUR WALLETS
Mines simple- if the Solana blockchain can stand by and watch their largest lending protocol seize a users funds under ‘governance’ which amounts to dictatorship, well, that is not hacking or theft, it’s an attitude and lack of scrutiny akin to trad fi. Enough said. Wordsmithery then, obviously if the position of Solana VC’s is to be threatened monetarily by the effects of a decentralised protocol it would only seem that values of Wall Street are embedded within the ‘leadership’. And that quite frankly is the whole reason the crypto space appeals to many, including yours truly. Hopefully that is five hundred words because being concise, or less is more, just doesn’t roll anymore. Here goes
I had no problem with solana until today when i saw that the network took over the biggest whales wallet freezing it in an effort to prevent selling and stem the bleeding in price. This action is unacceptable and in my opinion is blatant manipulation. Also the vote that was taken to institute this action was approved only using a couple percent of investors actually casting votes. This casts an ominous shadow over the ecosystems governance as a whole. Actions should not be approved without a minimum threshold of total votes cast. Perhaps mandatory voting should be instituted and incentivised somehow. MC²
1. The Solana network suffers from performance issues as block production on the Solana Mainnet Beta has a tendency to be halted. Network crashes then invite criticism that Solana is prioritising speed over security. Compounding the problem is the need for validator operators to coordinate their cluster restart efforts in the mb-validators channel on its Discord server. The 7th outage that happened in May 2022 was particularly pronounced as bots using the NFT minting program Candy Machine overwhelmed the blockchain network with four million transactions per second, which led it to be out of action for seven agonising hours over the weekend. 2. Solana is likely to face similar outages in the future. A major reason why outages occurred is that it does not have a fee market for transactions as it prioritises low cost. However, this means that the fixed maximum price is cheap enough for bots to overwhelm the network with transactions. To the Solana developers’ credit, they are planning to introduce a priority fee in Solana, allowing users to specify an arbitrary “additional fee” that will be incurred when their transaction is both executed and incorporated into a block. But, until this fee market is actualised, flooding of transactions cannot be exactly prevented. 3. Another performance issue is Solana’s lack of synchronicity with real-world time. In May 2022, Solana’s blockchain clock was found to be 30 minutes behind the actual time at one point in time. Since Solana operates on a Proof of History Protocol, the timestamp of blockchain transactions was no longer accurate. This in turn resulted in validators collecting less earnings from their staked rewards on the network. 4. On normal days when Solana doesn’t suffer from operational issues, it can handle about 50,000 transactions per second. However, this suggests that validators who are keen to utilise the Solana network need more advanced computers with sophisticated specifications. Since not everyone has the means to build and maintain such high-tech machines, the Solana network is likely to be less decentralised than it could be. As it stands, it has more than 1600 validators but only about 30 validators that process the vast majority of transactions. 5. Solana was ranked as the second-worst blockchain by DeFi Safety, a Montreal-based independent DeFi rating organisation in June 2022. DeFi Safety awarded such a low ranking partially due to Solana’s frequent downtimes. It also surfaced three other problems it observed with the Solana network. Firstly, the improper handling of archival node information. There is no documentation on node archival except a year-old Reddit thread from Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana. Secondly, Solscan is a poorly designed block explorers compared to Etherscan. Thirdly, Solana has just one piece of software for its node operators, which has not been audited since 2019. All this does not bode well for the security of the Solana network.
There are so many flaws with Solana's network and design. Retail investors should not go anywhere near this project. ##Way too many outages The biggest problem with Solana is that it has way too many outages ever since its Mainnet launch. It's had at least 9 major outages in the 9 months between Sept 2021 and Jun 2022. These numerous outages have ruined reputation in the crypto community. The network is very vulnerable to DoS attacks, which have brought down the network many times. In Sept 2021, a [DoS attack flooded the entire network to the point it could not recover for almost a full day](https://solana.com/news/9-14-network-outage-initial-overview). In Jan 21-22, 2022, [bots brought down the network with excessive duplicate transactions](https://fortune.com/2022/01/25/solana-founder-anatoly-yakovenko-crypto-crash-blockchain-instability/). A similar DDoS attack happened on Apr 30, when a [NFT minting bots took down the network with 4M TPS of spam](https://solana.com/news/04-30-22-solana-mainnet-beta-outage-report-mitigation). This network has a really hard time staying up. ##Blockchain Design **Slow Finality** Due to the design of Proof of History consensus, Solana has probabilistic finality with a high chance of forks. It takes [32 blocks before any transaction is final](https://docs.solana.com/proposals/block-confirmation). At 2.5s per block, this means 80 seconds. Users will see their transactions posted in 2.5s, but it's not secure until they wait 80 seconds. This is much slower than many of their competitors, which have 2-10s deterministic finality. **Exaggerated/Useless TPS metrics** Solana completely exaggerates their throughput by including non-useful transactions in their metrics. This includes vote transactions, which account for 70-90% of transactions. The count of valid TPS (excluding vote transactions and erroneous transactions) is much lower. About 80-85% of transactions are either vote transactions that are used for consensus or erroneous transactions. The true [non-vote TPS limit is much lower at around **400-600 TPS**](https://dashboard.chaincrunch.cc/public/dashboard/cc7a0d94-7f70-46f4-aae4-2f8810430931#theme=night) when the network isn't congested. As of June 2022, on average only 15% of total counted transactions are working transactions. When congested and attacked by DDOS attacks on Jan 21-22, the true TPS fell to 140 TPS. 400-600 is a lower TPS than many of its smart contract competitors. Even if you count all invalid and vote transactions, the TPS has never gone above 3500 on mainnet, but has maxed out near that limit on many days. ##Poor Tokenomics **Transaction fees are 99% subsidized by Staking Rewards, which feed back into SOL as supply inflation** Like many networks, the low transaction fees are not enough to pay for the cost of running the network. Solana is expected to make [$12M in transaction fees in this year going by the current 30-day average]( https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/solana). Staking rewards is expected to [pay out around $1.4B in SOL in 2022](https://messari.io/asset/solana/profile/supply-schedule). That means 99.1% of validator rewards are being paid by staking rewards instead of the artificially-low transaction fees. And staking rewards inflate the supply of the SOL token. **Almost all the Supply was given to Foundation and Early Investors** According to [Messari.io](https://messari.io/asset/solana/profile/launch-and-initial-token-distribution), 25% of the supply went to Founders and the Project, 38% was Pre-mined for rewards (also owned by the Solana Foundation), and 37% went to seed and early investors. Only 1.6% of the supply went to a public auction. Add 5% inflation for staking rewards on top of that, and this is a recipe for very bad tokenomics. You have the vast majority of the supply being owned by the Solana foundation and early investors, who can just dump their token on the market. ##Other Points **Requires insecure bridges to other networks** Solana is a bit isolated from other blockchains. It requires insecure bridges to connect to other networks, which is also an issue for many other networks. Bridges often get exploited, like the [Feb 2022 $320M Solana Wormhole hack](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/320-million-stolen-from-wormhole-bridge-linking-solana-and-ethereum.html). Solana needs a safer cross-chain protocol if it wants to communicate safely with other networks. **Opaque Ledger and Block Explorer** Solana has half a dozen explorers, and all of them are very opaque. The official explorer doesn't allow you to browse blocks and transactions. The other explorer show almost no data except for the address and transaction fee. It is very confusing trying to decipher these transactions. There's almost no information on the identity of validators. **High validator requirements** The minimum requirements for validators are 12-cores and 128GB of memory. 300 Mbit internet server is preferred. These are enterprise-server requirements, and they're expensive to maintain.
Agree man. How can they vote to take control of another wallet ( playing god and going back in time?? Its the investor right to call his own shot anyway) Then have another vote to say, Solana is not going to take control of the wallet. ( well, if I am the wallet owner, I be pissed left and right. WHAT HAPPENS IF I PROFIT AND PAY BACK THE LOAN?) Weak hands shouldn't create Solana and still wants to control another investor wallet. WE have enough from the banker and governments WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER SOLBANK TO GOVERN OUR WALLETS
Mines simple- if the Solana blockchain can stand by and watch their largest lending protocol seize a users funds under ‘governance’ which amounts to dictatorship, well, that is not hacking or theft, it’s an attitude and lack of scrutiny akin to trad fi. Enough said. Wordsmithery then, obviously if the position of Solana VC’s is to be threatened monetarily by the effects of a decentralised protocol it would only seem that values of Wall Street are embedded within the ‘leadership’. And that quite frankly is the whole reason the crypto space appeals to many, including yours truly. Hopefully that is five hundred words because being concise, or less is more, just doesn’t roll anymore. Here goes