Solana price dips as outage requires a network restart

The Solana mainnet, which is still technically referred to as “mainnet-beta” halted at approximately 5:30 am ET, effectively pausing all activity on the chain.

The major outage required a network restart. Engineers responded with a validator software patch about an hour after the incident, to allow validators to upgrade to version 1.17.20 and coordinate on getting the chain moving once again.

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Most of Solana’s validators were using either version 1.17.16 or 1.17.18 according to node data provider solanabeach.io.

A network restart — a process which can take hours — completed shortly before 10:00 am ET, as soon as validators with more than 80% of the SOL staked, collectively, become active post-upgrade.

Now, work begins on restarting dapps on the network and assessing the downstream effects.

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The price of solana (SOL) fell by about 3% to $93.39 as news of the outage spread, but has recovered 2% since, to trade at $95.14 as of 10:30 am ET.

Solana had remained in continuous operation for almost a year, previously suffering major outages in February 2023, June 2022, and September 2021.

Last updated on Feb. 6 at 10:35 am ET with additional context.

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