The Solana Project: Striving for Speed and Decentralization
The goal of the Solana project is to build the world’s fastest network that is open, permissionless, and decentralized. However, Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, acknowledges that achieving this goal is still a work in progress.
During an interview at Paris Blockchain Week, Federa emphasized that the current user experience of the Solana network falls short of expectations. He attributed this shortfall to the unexpected congestion resulting from the project’s success.
Understanding the Challenges
- Federa describes the congestion on Solana as a consequence of its success.
- The network has experienced a surge in activity, surpassing initial projections.
- Solana is processing more transactions per second than Ethereum’s layer 1s and layer 2s combined.
While acknowledging the positive aspect of high demand, Federa also recognizes the need for improvements to address congestion issues.
Navigating Through Success and Challenges
Despite the unexpected surge in demand, Federa believes that Solana developers should have been better prepared to anticipate and address network congestion through timely upgrades.
He explains, “The estimation between what the demand for Solana would be versus when this thing needed to be upgraded and fixed, those things did not line up.”
