Solana Announces Recommendations and Measures to Deal With Network Congestion

The Solana Foundation has announced several recommendations that developers should follow to cope with the high usage that the network is currently experiencing. The foundation recommended implementing priority fees, and a series of optimizations to avoid dropping transactions. Also, an improved transaction scheduler is expected to be included in the next update.

Solana Foundation Makes Recommendations for Optimized Block Usage

The Solana Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the adoption of the Solana ecosystem, has made some recommendations to maintain the “high performance” of the Solana network, which has faced high usage during these last weeks. While Solana has not stopped due to this congestion, several tools and techniques can be applied by app developers to maintain this “continued high performance,” including the implementation of priority fees.

Due to the traits of the blockchain, many Solana apps still haven’t implemented priority fees, which incentivize validators to schedule a transaction over the others. These fees are paid in micro-lamports, fractional amounts of SOL, and must be added to the standard fee of each transaction.

The foundation states that implementing fee prioritization “will help address user experience issues,” avoiding or minimizing the occurrence of dropped or delayed transactions.

Also, other measures might help optimize block use, like reducing the amount of resources used by apps to increase the possibilities of transactions reaching the network. The foundation also stated that prioritizing transactions that go through a staked validator to provide additional sybil resistance would also help maintain the network operating properly.

Nonetheless, a new and improved transaction scheduler expected to arrive experimentally by mid-April, might be the best way of solving the current network congestion. According to Rex St. John, in charge of developer relations at Anza, this implementation comes to correct the problem of the current scheduler when dealing with conflicting transactions, which slows its performance.

St. John stated:

It’s kind of like hungry hungry hippos… It creates a bit of confusion that takes time to unwind.

What do you think about the recommendations and measures taken by the Solana Foundation to deal with network congestion? Tell us in the comments section below.