From Fortune:

Solana, the popular blockchain, experienced a five-hour outage, raising questions about its reliability and decentralization. The native token, SOL, tumbled but has since recovered. It’s yet unclear what caused the cluster halt requiring a system restart.

Solana’s recent booming rise of over 400% in 2023 makes it a leading competition, but doubts are raised about its technical foundation and decentralization. Ernst & Young’s global blockchain leader believes the latest hiccup is a real struggle for Solana, making its rival, Ethereum, look attractive in comparison.

The network’s centralized structure is at odds with crypto’s decentralization promise and has raised skepticism. A software bug propagated through the network could lead to such outages, and the recent stumble has reinforced the doubts of some industry leaders.

The network’s chronic outages and multiple failures have led to criticism and skepticism about its centralization. The company has faced 14 outages in one year, with a total downtime of 4 days 12 hours 21 minutes.

The recent outage comes at a crucial time for Solana Labs’ reputation, following invested Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall. His downfall made investors reluctant to back Solana, which he had endorsed. His involvement in a financial fraud dragged down the value of SOL tokens, causing a loss of trust in the network.



Read more: Solana’s latest outage incites fresh centralization criticism