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Solana validators hosted by major hosting provider Hetzner have been blocked without warning. Top executives at Solana urged affected validators to move to another crypto-friendly hosting provider. Almost simultaneously with this incident, co-founder Anatoly Yakavenko announced that Solana’s new validator, due by the end of 2022, will dramatically improve the reliability of the network.
Large hosting provider Hetzner blocked access to servers with Solana nodes. Validators reported that they simultaneously received letters from the hoster demanding that all Solana-related software be removed in order to continue operating. The firm stated that its policy forbids the use of its servers for crypto-related activities.
The incident came as a complete surprise to Solana node operators. This ban only affected the income of a limited number of stacking members (which was zeroed out at the time of the incident) and does not seem to have had any effect on the rest of the network.
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Data on affected validators varies, with figures ranging from 40% to 20%.
According to Google Cloud developer Sam Padilla, 40% of Solana validators were located on Hetzner. RockawayX dashboard shows that the delinquent stake ratio in the Solana blockchain has jumped to 20%. This figure reflects the percentage of validators that went offline.
At the time of this writing, that ratio has dropped to 5%, which is likely due to the players’ quick decision to run validators on other providers.
At the time of the incident with the disconnection of some of the validators, the Solana network continued to operate. According to the Solana Status service, the network had no technical problems with messaging and worked as usual.
Current market data shows that Solana’s price was initially down about 2% on the news of the incident, but at the time of writing the SOL has recovered to its previous value. The network is operating normally at this point.
In August 2022, Hetzner officially prohibited running any crypto software on its servers. The provider stressed that the use of its products for staking/mining applications was “categorically not allowed.” Nevertheless, no action was taken, and many validator and node operators stayed with this provider.
Experts point out that according to the latest data from Ethernodes, over 12% of Ethereum nodes are still running on Hetzner servers, which by analogy could be blocked at any time.
But there is good news for Solana fans. In a recent interview, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakavenko said that the new Solana validator soft, which will be available in late 2022, will significantly improve network reliability.
Yakavenko said the new Solana Firedancer validator, which is currently being written in the C++ programming language, will check Solana’s status in parallel with the current validator software. According to Yakavenko, the new validator will provide Solana with the same reliability as Ethereum.
“So, having two separate clients in the network will like, basically give us the same reliability as you see on Ethereum today,” he said in the last interview.
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