The Solana co-founder claimed in an interview with CNBC that Bitcoin needs to be changed Proof of Stake (PoS) to stay relevant. However, it looks like PoS isn’t working very well for Solana. The Solana blockchain has experienced multiple outages since May. As a result, validators on the network did not process new blocks for several hours. Applications built on Solana’s blockchain have also been taken offline multiple times.
But how did the failure come about?
The Solana blockchain has stopped creating new blocks due to what is known as a runtime error. As a result, crypto miners or “validators” were unable to mine new blocks and earn rewards. Runtime error causes a situation where validators process failed transactions twice, resulting in a complete halt of the network.
Mining is essentially a verification game. Every transaction that takes place on a blockchain must be verified by crypto miners. When a failed transaction is verified by miners, the entire blockchain is disrupted. This is the disadvantage of the PoS consensus mechanism.
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Unlike Proof-of-Work (PoW) used by Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., where each miner independently verifies transactions, PoS selects a miner from the mining pool. So if the miner verifies an incorrect transaction, the entire blockchain becomes inoperable. This also causes the blockchain to split in two, ultimately stopping the blockchain for hours altogether.
Explaining the issue, a Solana blockchain developer tweeted: “Chain splits occur when two parts of the network, for some reason, calculate a different state on the same transactions. They are a class of bugs that are difficult to completely prevent, even with large test coverage, and impact every chain.” Every transaction that took place during this time was voided by the Solana team. The network was restored after over four hours and the news was shared via the blockchain’s official Twitter handle.
It is worth noting that PoW blockchains are not affected by runtime errors. This is because, unlike PoS, crypto miners use specialized equipment to validate each transaction.
Solana says it addressed the “double processing power” problem. However, we cannot be sure that outages will continue. Notably, this was the eighth time the Solana blockchain has been halted, earning investors fortunes and their time.
Meanwhile, Solana claims that a single Transaction in its network consumes less energy than two Google searches and 24 times less energy than charging your phone, according to a Solana Foundation report.
Ethereum is also in other news switch to PoS, to become environmentally friendly. However, much research needs to be done to understand the risks associated with PoS and then mitigate them. At the moment it looks like more cryptocurrencies PoS will follow in the future.
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