The ability for a select few validators to restart an entire network highlights Solana’s centralisation issues.
Being able to simply restart the mainnet in this fashion, certainly highlights the fact that Solana (SOL) is not decentralised.
We have previously spoken about the fact that when it comes to decentralisation, nothing is black and white and I’d like to kick off by reiterating that point.
When it comes to different consensus algorithms and distributions, there is always going to be tradeoffs between security and performance.
Solana’s network capabilities with a tight-knit group of team run consensus validators holding the vast majority of SOL supply in circulation, is the perfect example of this.
Which side of this divide you sit on will most likely decide whether you agree with the call that Solana is not decentralised.
Let’s go into a little more detail around what caused the network to restart and what this means for Solana as a decentralised blockchain going forward.
Solana restarts its mainnet network
In the early hours of Wednesday morning earlier this week, Solana network validators restarted the Solana mainnet.
The Solana Foundation attributed the outage to a flood of transactions that overwhelmed the network yesterday.
Adding that engineers on the network could not stabilise Solana in time.
The statement read:
“Solana Mainnet Beta encountered a large increase in transaction load which peaked at 400,000 [transactions per second].”
“These transactions flooded the transaction processing queue, and the lack of prioritization of network-critical messaging caused the network to start forking.”
This forking led to excessive memory consumption, causing some nodes to go offline.”
For many within the Solana community however, this rhetoric was not enough to make up for the blow to price.
The last time we took a look at the Solana chart, the bulls were large and in charge with price breaking $100.
But as you can see on the updated SOL daily chart below, those days are looking more like a distant memory.
Yeah, not ideal.
Solana is centralised
Ultimately, what this shows us is that Solana is not decentralised at all.
Seriously though...
If you can just shut it down all day for maintenance by a select group of validators linked to the original team, it certainly isn’t very decentralised.
At this stage, Solana could just get rid of the blockchain aspect to their network and just use a database.
It would certainly be more efficient.
When it comes to Solana’s centralisation, I’ll leave you with the following.
Can the Hive community be critical of the way Steem’s consensus witnesses are all linked to Justin Sun, but be okay with Solana’s level of centralisation?
An interesting one for the comments section I’m sure.
Best of probabilities to you.
Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.
Why not leave a comment and share your thoughts on the Solana network being centralised within the comments section below? All comments that add something to the discussion will be upvoted.
This Solana crypto blog is exclusive to leofinance.io.
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Hey thanks for the write up!
I have been following Solana from the sidelines for a long time now, and while there should be credit for their innovative tech, that is not just another EVM, the centralization issues are there. It's just to much growth in a short period of time. In years they might achieve something.... I guess we will wait and see.
Do you see the Solana network becoming more decentralised over time?
Is there at least the possibility of the current tight-knit group of validators relinquishing some of their stake/control going forward?
As you said, there's no doubt that Solana is doing some cool, innovative things in the space and they deserve credit for not just being another Ethereum clone.
But as long as this centralisation issue is hanging over the network's head, I can't see this initial hype (and SOL price explosion) lasting.
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BSC is an example of centralization that works. A lot of crypto projects are like that. BTC is probably the one truly decentralized, although mining pools are an issue there as well. At the end decentralization is a spectrum, not a black and white. It needs to be decemtralized just enough to be secure and work.
This sums it up entirely. There is no way to proclaim something decentralized when a select handful of founders control the entire network. Not much different than Tron or a host of other platforms out there.
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You know what's funny? Tron is used for USDT transactions and it's cheaper than Ethereum. Not a fan of Tron, but will have to give it credit on this one.
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But you may as well just send US dollars using a bank...
There is literally zero benefit to using a centralised blockchain like TRON.
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Tron is mostly a ripoff of EOS. You can transact BTC on EOS for free in 0.5 seconds (like you trade HIVE-Engine Tokens). Tron is not even leading the pack. But we do have to admit when its doing better than most.
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This is exactly what the SEC is targeting right now.
The only way to stay our of their sights and win long term is to be a TRUE decentralized project.
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I have no doubt the US is going to eventually wake up and realise that they need crypto more than crypto needs them and regulate smarter.
To be fair when it comes to the SEC, the US and their regulator are not the key to the entire global crypto industry.
Sure they're a large part... But so was China before their authoritarian government decided they needed to shift Bitcoin miners out.
That network and the industry has only gone from strength to strength since.
Do you see Hive being one such example of a truly decentralised project?
I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
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I actually feel the US will fight crypto until the very end just like China is doing.
I feel US citizens will be left behind in the new age that is coming.
If you have read the 4th turn and understand turns (in relation to history of the world) this next turn will the US behind.
As far as Hive being truly decentralized, I would have to side with more decentralized than most.
I also feel this question would have to relate to the exact way you interact with the chain.
I still have some issues on top 20 witnesses and 30 votes but this topic has been discussed many many times.
I feel the real future of cyrpto/blockchains and the world is building the IBC protocol out so all blockchains can talk to each other.
This will allow for smaller more focused chains and for decentralization across the new 3.0 internet that is entirely built on blockchains.
Well said. You cannot trust SEC to do the right things to make our lives better.
!PIZZA
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The difference between Solana and Hive being that here, the witnesses are elected via a stake based voting system.
But as no single account holds more than 2% of the total HIVE supply (can someone confirm this number?), our distribution and therefore voting, is extremely decentralised.
Add in the fact we are adding vote decay to our stake based witness voting and you can see Hive's governance model is far superior from a decentralisation point of view.
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I wasn't around for the STEEM stuff but I do think the future will probably be either decentralize or face tough times. Centralized means legal suits and issues with the block chain. In a decentralized enough system, one or two people having issues isn't an issue since more people can just spin up more nodes as needed.
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Wherever you have centralisation, you have efficiency...
But you also have a single point of failure.
That could be legal issues, moral issues, censorship etc etc.
In my opinion, the truly decentralised networks with extremely distributed tokens are going to be the most successful.
A profile that Solana doesn't fit.
PS. We're in the same Rabona league right now but your team doesn't have any contracted players!
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They have less than 1000 validators and look at the supply. There is nothing in the circulating or in small wallets. Centralized and whale-driven. The irony is there are people that say Solana is better than ethereum.
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Exactly this!
Solana might technically perform better than Ethereum.
But so does any centralised network with a database...
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If the network isn't decentralized and it performs 10000X better than Ethereum I see no point in using that thing instead I would choose centralized old school platforms.
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As long as there's a switch off button any decentralization discussion is pointless. This should be a warning signal for the majority of investors who have poured tons of money on it based on hype and shilling. I bet most of the twitter shillers haven't even thought about it from this angle.
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The hype around Solana based NFTs is what makes me shake my head.
Literally carbon copies of Ethereum based projects... but hosted on a centralised network.
I would say surely the bubble is going to burst here, but as I'm typing this I see the SOL price is continuing to recover back toward $200.
Wild.
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@forexbrokr, nice post! I also went through all comments. It was interesting to read the comments since they'd been written by well-known active HIVErs! So, I am not familiar with how the ecosystem of Solana works, but I do think that HIVE is the most decentralized PoS ecosystem for smart contracts. It is just a matter of time it will skyrocket. Also, I think it is one of the potential Ethereum competitors.
HIVE on!
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Thanks mate, it has been really cool to see the LeoFinance community getting involved in the comments of this one :)
I agree with you about Hive and think that at these prices, we're criminally undervalued.
But hey, as a trader you know as well as anyone that the market is never wrong ;)
I'm sure Hive's time will come...
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You're right, the SOL price is recovering.
I guess right now the market doesn't care as much about Solana's centralisation as we do.
I say right now because I do think that in the long term, the truly decentralised networks with extremely distributed tokens are going to be the most successful.
While Solana is doing well now, it certainly doesn't fit the profile I'm looking for.
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