A recent Solana network outage lasting over five hours has prompted Bitcoin proponent Max Keiser to label the blockchain “centralized garbage.” The incident’s severity risks SOL and dApps built atop Solana, reviving doubts about its purported decentralization.
On February 7th, the Solana network experienced severe transaction processing delays, taking minutes instead of milliseconds per block. This imitated vulnerabilities seen during 51% attacks, fueling concerns about the blockchain’s architecture.
$SOL is centralized garbage. It’s illegal to trade unregistered securities and garbage like Solana in #ElSalvador — to protect Salvadorans from scammers, frauds and cons line SOL ETH ADA BNB AVAX FAB + 20,000 other shitcoins. https://t.co/F6Z6uz2Hmm
— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) February 6, 2024
Solana gets slammed as centralized
The failure aggravated industry voices like Keiser, who blasted Solana’s “centralization” shortcomings. Meanwhile, ex-DeFi backer Beanie argued investors should abandon the “incompetent” network after repeated instability issues. He even suggests its developers deliver “zero value.”
Such criticism arises just as Solana recovers lost ground—its total value locked recently quintupled from 2022 lows to $1.67 billion. Hence, any downtime now threatens more users and dApps than during prior incidents.
A Visa hardware failure in 2018 impacted millions of customers globally, causing transaction headaches. Any payments-focused blockchain should avoid similar reliability issues to appeal to institutions.
By undermining network operations for over five hours, Solana’s latest outage will likely intensify ongoing debates over its decentralization claims. Critics like Keiser and Beanie argue that such incidents expose an underlying lack of true decentralization.
To regain trust, Solana must demonstrate a capacity to resist censorship and remain reliably functional without centralized oversight. As developers optimize stability, architects may also look to improve decentralization to mitigate future criticism.
Since rival chains market themselves as more decentralized options for Web3 building, Solana faces pressure to enhance its security architecture and governance model.
Only then can it achieve more resiliency and quell doubts raised by repeated outages that hamper users. The network’s long-term trajectory depends partly on addressing these concerns.
