Solana price falls further as Ore suspends mining on the network

Ore’s price more than tripled as the supply of new tokens paused

article-image

ARTEMENKO VALENTYN/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

One key driver behind Solana’s current congestion issues is giving the network a break.

Hardhat Chad, the pseudonymous creator of the Ore project, has announced the project will suspend all mining activities, effective immediately. This decision comes just weeks after Ore’s launch, amid growing pains for the Solana network that have included severe congestion issues and network instability.

Ore’s price more than tripled on news that the token’s supply would be paused, from around $93 before the announcement to over $300 shortly after, before drawing down to around $215, according to CoinGecko. Solana extended its bearish week even further, falling roughly from $131 to $127.

Ore is a blockchain-based project that implemented a proof-of-work (PoW) token distribution mechanism on the Solana network to explore a possibly more engaging and equitable way of distributing cryptocurrency.

Since Ore began trading earlier this month, the network’s diehards have flocked to what some dubbed Bitcoin on Solana. 

Bitcoin uses a PoW mechanism to distribute new coins and validate transactions. While secure, this system has been known to result in high energy consumption and slow transaction times.

The Solana blockchain, which has high throughput and low transaction costs, operates differently. It uses a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with proof-of-stake (PoS), which significantly speeds up transactions and reduces costs.

Ore was introduced as an experiment to explore how proof-of-work could be implemented on Solana as a fun and fair token distribution mechanism. It aimed to merge the security and distribution model of PoW with Solana’s high-speed transaction capabilities.

Shortly after launch, Ore became the most active program on Solana by transaction count, according to the project’s creator. 

Amid the deluge of transactions, as many as 75% of non-vote Solana transactions were not going through in early April, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard. That figure is closer to 60% now.

While colloquially referred to as “failed” transactions, Solana’s problem is actually that the network is failing to schedule some transactions effectively. That means they’re dropped from the network before ever being included in a block. Regardless, to the end user, a frustrating fraction of on-chain actions are failing to land. 

Ore highlighted how Solana’s low fees can actually work against the network when the transaction cost isn’t high enough to discourage spam. 

Read more: Solana’s cheap fees are turning out to be a curse — for now

This realization has led to the current pause in Ore mining activities, allowing Hardhat Chad and their team to redesign the Ore contract for a Version 2 (v2). The next iteration aims to optimize the existing system, address inefficiencies that gave some miners an asymmetric advantage, and introduce structural incentives for holding the token, which were previously lacking.

“Welcome back, Solana,” one industry watcher wrote on X. 

As Solana continues to deploy patches like v1.17.31 to improve performance and manage congestion, Ore’s v2 is being developed to better align with these network upgrades. All existing Ore tokens will be upgradable one-for-one into the new v2 token, ensuring fairness and continuity for current participants.

The mining halt is only temporary, as Ore hopes to bring its PoW concept back to Solana under more favorable conditions.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
  • Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.jpg

Research

Bluefin possibly stands at an inflection point. The token is near an all-time low yet the protocol’s spot volume market share and derivatives exchange usage have been increasing month over month since its November launch. Given its current market position and the upcoming upgrades (for both Bluefin and SUI), there may be upside potential before the increased supply growth in December. However, strong opposition from existing competitors (like Cetus and Suilend), as well as new entrants (like Aftermath), pose key challenges to Bluefin’s medium-term success.

article-image

Top Committee Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren in her opening statement accused Atkins of “helping billionaire CEOs like Sam Bankman-Fried”

article-image

Introducing garbled circuits for enhanced privacy and regulatory compliance

article-image

Ross Ulbricht was a freedom maximalist building freedom tech, powered by Bitcoin

article-image

Solana validators can reap benefits including payments, votes and community clout

article-image

Sponsored

WalletConnect is cementing itself as the essential connectivity layer, ensuring wallets remain the entry point for billions of users

article-image

According to a legal filing, Galaxy Digital helped boost the price of LUNA while quietly selling its tokens