Solana network users are currently in a state of panic as the main clock chain is running 30 minutes late. As per media reports, the slowing down of the chain has generated transaction lags on the network, and on-chain time is also affected by the incident. The users of the network are running 30 minutes behind in comparison to the real-time, creating an air of concern among the stakeholders.
The lag is the result of the longer than required slot times on the ecosystem. A notice by the Solana network developers suggests that the pushback is not affecting the performance of the network. Meanwhile, investors’ account suggests that the timestamps on the network are not in sync with the standard real-time.
Solana’s Clock Loses Track of Time
Data issued by the Solana blockchain explorer can help in the reconciliation process between the current and the past performance of the Solana network transactions. It is worth noting that Slot time is the amount of time that a node validator requires to submit a new block to the ecosystem. According to the investors, the current time conundrum has contributed to increasing or slowing down the slot time on the network.
The benchmark slot time on the Solana network is 700 milliseconds. However, since the time disparity has been inflicted on the blockchain, it has been doubled to 746 minutes as per Solana blockchain explorer. Solana network employs the Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-History consensus model.
PoH is accountable for time management on the Solana network by issuing nodes that record time slots.
Due to PoH, the timekeeping mechanism is decentralized on the Solana network that is distributed among the cluster of validators.
The real losses are incurred for the stakers on the Solana network who are suffering from the drop in yearly epochs. Ideally, there are around 182 epochs every year on the network, and each epoch carries around 432K slots.
With the slowing down of time slots, there are lesser epochs, and it means that the stakers are set to lose their rewards as the network generates staking rewards at each epoch event.
In the past, the Solana network has also suffered from other technical issues and lags, including full outages. The recent time disparity is not going to slow down the transaction speed by many hours, but it will cause financial damage to the validators and delegators by diminishing their staking rewards.