What is the Cause of Solana’s Failures?

We're seeing the Sal Network fairly Congested from a user transaction Perspective now the core of the network The actual consensus layer totally fine Not impacted at all but you know from a User experience perspective the network Is nowhere near where we sort of Hope And expect it to be it's running at About 7 700 transactions per second now Um you know which is still pretty Commendable even in the sort of degraded State the network is in now but you know The these are sort of situations where There's a lot of work that still is Being done on the Sonic cor protocol and So one of the components here that you Know there's a known uh you know Bottleneck let's call it that way in it Um is in the networking stack Implementation with one specific Component in that and you know it was on The road map for uh developers to Address and fix but the estimation Between what the demand for salana would Be versus when this thing needed to be Upgraded and fixed uh those those things Did not line up and so the charitable View of this is a failure of success There's huge demand for the Salo blocks Space there's huge demand for the Network it's processing more Transactions than all the ethereum layer 1es and layer twos combined the less Charitable read is it's a failure of

Planning and and both are fair ways to Look at it that you know at this point a Lot of the developers on solo should Have been able to anticipate the sort of Demand spiked based on the past usage of The network but demand is not the worst Problem to have how difficult is it to Address um a lot of the criticisms on Social media in particular cuz it's Pretty wild up there yeah you know I Mean one of the great things about Crypto Twitter is anyone anywhere in the World can have ideas and one of the Problems with crypto Twitter is anyone Anywhere in the world can have ideas um And so I think what we see is a lot of Uh good faith engagement around you know How people can improve the ability to Land transactions especially from Developers and users on the Sala Network There's also some Bad actors as well who Are intentionally spreading Misinformation um you know but this is Nothing new for crypto Twitter this is Nothing new for this ecosystem in Trenched Financial incentives are one of The greatest parts of this industry but It also can create lots of uh incentives For people to spread false information As well salana has had Ares in the past And a lot has been made of that uh You're not the only blockchain protocol That has that problem right I mean we Are not Bitcoin maximalist and those

Sort of things will will take big shots At uh these protocols for having these Problems um do you think that it's it's Okay that there are outages in these Different protocols so I think we're Still in the growth phase for all of These networks right I think we have to Remind ourselves that Amazon web Services went down for years in the Beginning uh you know traditional Financial markets have outages every day It's called trading hours right they're They're online from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 P.m. and they're offline the other times And so you know crypto is being graded On a different scale and I think it's It's it's appropriate to be upset about Down times and outages the goal is uh 100% uptime that should be the goal for The whole industry Uh if that comes at the expense of no Scale that's not necessarily I think the Best the best tradeoff to make um the Vision of this entire space is to help Disrupt the global financial industry as It exists today to build more fair Economic structures to build more fair Economy is to make it so anyone anywhere In the world can make a living and Transact freely and openly that goal I Think is worth a little bit of downtime Sometime to be pushing the balance of What's possible and that downtime is not Limited to Salas as you said you know

Every major L2 has had downtime and Outages as well many other l1s have Faced the same problems that's not to Excuse them it's not to say they're okay But it is to say that you know as as an Industry we are still very much in the In the development and growth phase and There's a reason there's a beta tag Still attached to salana the beta tag is Honest the network today does not Represent the final form of what you Know developers hope that networ will be In the future and there might be other Networks that probably should also Append Deb attack to them meme coins Have obviously been raging on salana as Well how does the salana foundation feel About meme coins you know uh people ask Me this question a lot the foundation Doesn't really have an opinion on the Activity that takes place on the network There is no good or bad type of Application on salana um you know our Goal at the foundation is to to help the Advancement of the security the Centralization and Adoption of the Sala Blockchain and meme coins are you know a Lot of adoption um they are a stress Test of the network with very low risk Also so there's a lot of good things That come out of meme coins using the Network there's one meme coin that Recently launched that had a new type of Transaction that you know really

Stressed a bunch of this of Sala Network And that's part of where some of the Congestion we're seeing today comes from The same way that inscriptions you know Tested Bitcoin and you know they they Found some bugs in Bitcoin as part of That and that's really helped push the Development of of stacks and Bitcoin l2s For as well so you know Meme coins are a Really good way to stress test networks And yeah I mean you mentioned that it Did lead to some of this congestion how Much can you actually do about that I Mean uh from a development perspective When when you're getting these surges Intivity so what the web two people will Say is just start blocking stuff we know How to do this all the time there a big Button in Cloud flare that says under Attack block a bunch of connections we Don't want that either right that that Is not the blockchain way and so you Know there are solutions are sort of Very quick and dirty Solutions like just Raise fees on the network but raising Fees on the network is sort of The Last Resort um there there are a lot of Systems like stake weighted quality of Service that can be used to help filter Out transactions that are more valuable Or less valuable or less reputable or More reputable and so raising fees you Know creates bad user experiences it Creates multi- dollar transaction fees

It creates limited transaction per Second capacity um in a lot of areas too And so you know from from our Perspective at the foundation and to be Clear we do not run the network it Really is up to the validators and Developers to decide what direction they Want to take this in the future but There are better tools and Technologies To start addressing spam and congestion Before Fe discrimination fee Discrimination is a great fallback and You know Sal has local fee markets that Are are getting built up more robustly So they can better handle that sort of Fee discrimination but that is really The last resort I think kind of brings Me to the next Point since just I Remember a few years ago writing a story About uh people like putting metad dots On the Bitcoin blockchain that you know Contain pornography there was some Criticisms about some of the like racist Meme coins that came out on Sana Obviously you have no control about that But it's it does raise the question like What does the ecosystem do when some Really unsavory things are happening Shame so the ecosystem has actually done A ton to address this um you know Wallets like Phantom and other leading Wallets and backpack they already block Spam nfts that that are trying to you Know send you to a fraudulent website

They hide a bunch of you know fake Stable coins that pretend to be usdc but Aren't actually issued by Circle and so From that perspective you know removing You know racist or other types of mean Coins from the frontend user experience Is something that already happens daily In in crypto and not just on salonon and So you know we think this is best Addressed on the user facing side on the Front ends on these these interfaces That people use to interact with Blockchain but the core BAS ler of Salana has to remain permissionless Decentralized and open and if that means That you know people are putting uh Material that I personally object to on The network that is unfortunate but it Is not something where you know the Foundation or any other actor in the Network has the technical ability to Restrict that or should be advocating For that type of restriction you know One analogy here is it's like internet Service providers you know the United States Verizon Comcast AT&T T-Mobile These entities are not expected to Prevent a fishing email from Landing in Your inbox these are understood as being Different stacked different levels of The network and blockchain at its core It is BAS layer neutral Communications Infrastructure whatever people want to Build on top of it and so it's really

Important that it remains that way there Are uh protocols that are doing airdrops That have said that any wallet that's Interacted with these you know racist Meme coins will be ineligible for an Airdrop economic incentives are really Powerful and so I think that that sort Of community control over how they want Their user and their tokens to be Distributed that is really powerful and So you know these things don't have to Be solved at the Bas layer they can be Solved above Austin thanks very much for Your time thanks for chatting to us and Uh we look forward to seeing you at the Next C yes thank you [Music] [Music] That