- This week, a fix was swiftly released by core contributors after receiving a Discord alert.
This week, Solana developers covertly discovered and addressed a serious vulnerability, which very few people were aware of.
The covert patch, on the one hand, calls into doubt the degree of decentralization on the third-largest blockchain by total value locked. However, some people might be happy that the vulnerability didn’t result in a power outage.
Solana’s Stakewiz validator, Laine, disclosed in a post titled “Anatomy of a Patch” that was published on August 8 that the main validators’ prior notification enabled the timely settlement.
On August 7, a Discord notice stated that a critical vulnerability discovered by core contributors required immediate patching. Validators from more than 70% of Solana’s network completed the fix in a matter of minutes.
According to Solana Beach, there are 1,515 validators on the island right now. With 3.39%, 3.36%, and 2.89% of the network’s total stake, respectively, Helius, Galaxy, and Coinbase represent the largest sets.
According to Laine, the Discord notice asked them to prepare for a follow-up message and the impending patching, which is scheduled to happen on August 8 at 10:00 EST. Two different Solana Foundation members sent them private messages with instructions.
The Solana Foundation’s members conducted rigorous and continuous research, and through projects like Anza, Jito, Jump, Firedancer, and others, the community was able to gain a supermajority of 67% of validators’ consensus to implement the patch after first reaching a super minority of 19%.
Contributors to Solana called on other validators to upgrade once the supermajority was attained and the network appeared to be safe.
Dispersed?
This quiet patching raises a few questions.
How is it possible for 70% of the validator set to discover and fix a significant issue in just a few minutes if Solana is decentralized? Furthermore, why was coordination happening in the background when the bulk of Solana’s ecology was unaware of a scenario that would be dangerous?
Laine’s portrayal of the scenario suggests that keeping the details of what was going on secret was necessary to prevent a bad actor from taking advantage of the circumstances.
Regarding the triday of silent cooperation between validators and core contributors, Anza engineer trent.sol refuted claims of extreme centralization.
Not Another Blackout
Equally noteworthy is the way a network that was infamous for its congestion and outages was able to resolve a serious vulnerability without having to put the network on hold.
Developers and engineers at Solana should be commended for their ability to restore the network and avoid the need to turn off the protocol.
As we’ve all been friends with one another over the years, validators are frequently only a one-degree friend away from you, which makes Solana’s validator community incredibly vibrant and dynamic, according to Laine.
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