Solana prevents potential outage, patches critical vulnerability

Solana ecosystem participants patched a major vulnerability on the network, securing the blockchain before disclosing the information to the public. 

On Aug. 9, Solana validator Laine posted on X that a “critical security vulnerability” was fixed by developers, validators and client teams working within the Solana ecosystem.

The company shared that they first received a message on Aug. 7 from multiple members of the Solana Foundation. Within the messages, they were advised about an upcoming critical patch and a hashed message with the date and unique identifier of the incident. Laine wrote:

“[...] the hash shared in this message was published by multiple prominent members of Anza, Jito and Solana Foundation on Twitter/X, Github and even Linkedin in order to confirm the veracity of the message.”

Laine added that the message included a specific date and time when the patch would be sent so that it could be applied to mainnet nodes urgently to protect the network.

Cointelegraph contacted the Solana Foundation for comments but did not receive an immediate response.

Solana developers prevent potential outage

According to Laine, the vulnerability could have led to a potential outage on the Solana network. The validator said that the patch itself clarifies the vulnerability. Because of this, if the patch leaked, an attacker could attempt to reverse engineer the vulnerability and potentially “halt the network.”

However, the patch was only communicated from one trusted party to another and was released simultaneously so the parties involved could upgrade together. Once 70% of the network was patched and “ostensibly safe,” the vulnerability was finally disclosed to the public.

Solana faced criticisms for past network outages

While prevention is better than a cure, the Solana network has experienced previous outages. On Feb. 6, the network faced significant downtime, with block production being halted for more than five hours. This impacted crypto exchanges, with some suspending deposits and withdrawals of Solana-based tokens.

The outage raised questions about the network’s client diversity and beta status. Critics said that one factor contributing to the outage was the network’s lack of diversity of clients. Komodo’s Kadan Stadelmann previously told Cointelegraph that Solana developers and validators prioritize speed over perfect network uptime.

In a prior exclusive interview during Paris Blockchain Week in April 2024, Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Federa said that the protocol still remains in a beta phase and that network today does not represent the final form of what developers hope it will be in the future. He also suggested that other layer-1 and layer-2 networks should adopt similar tags as they continue to build out functionality.