Solana Struggles Amid Meme Coin Mania As Record 75% Of Transactions Fail

Updated: 05 April 2024

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The Solana network is succumbing to the pressure of high network activity caused by meme coin mania as the success of titans like Dogwifhat (WIF) and Bonk (BONK) takes its toll.

Data from Dune Analytics shows that three-quarters of non-vote transactions on Solana failed on April 4, the highest on record, as the blockchain sagged under the weight of surging trading volumes.

Solana has been abuzz with meme coin activity this year. The largest meme coin on the SOL network, Dogwifhat (WIF), saw its market cap balloon from under $100 million in January to over $3.3 billion now.

Other meme coins on the network, including BONK, and Book of Meme (BOME), have also seen their market caps and volumes soar. BONK has a market cap of $1.4 billion while BOME has soared to $745 million in a matter of weeks.

Data from DeFiLlama shows Solana DEX volumes have jumped from $850 million in mid-March to $1.35 billion on April 5.

Users On X Complain About Failed Solana Transactions

Users of the Solana blockchain took to X to complain, saying that Solana is failing to live up to expectations as the ideal chain for retail adoption. Among the critics was Altcoin Sherpa, with almost 214k followers, who said the experience on the blockchain recently had been ”brutal.”

I saw many user questions around #Solana transaction is pending/failed – Bull market pressure test is still too real. 75% failure rate. pic.twitter.com/iASTpBOhLD

— Eowync.eth (@EowynChen) April 5, 2024

Most Failed Transactions Are Bots

One of the main proponents of the Solana blockchain, Helius EO Mert Mumtaz, has attributed the failed transactions to “bot spam.”

rough TL;DR of what's happening:

– the networking stack (QUIC) on Solana is implemented poorly and does not handle spam well

– if everyone spams, a lot of connections get dropped since a block leader can only handle so many connections at once

– bots spam better than humans,…

— mert | helius | hSOL (@0xMert_) April 4, 2024

According to Mumtaz, the Dune data is not properly assessing the impact on users as 95% of the chart was ”just bots failing arbitrage attempts.”

“This is usually not a big problem for users because your wallet will simulate the [transaction] and let you know that it will not work beforehand anyway,” he said.

Solana’s price has dropped by 5.3% in the last 24 hours to trade at $175 at 03:53 EST.