Solana on-chain development increases after a recent DDoS attack

Solana, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is leading on-chain development charts despite a recent denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

As per Santiment data, Solana surpassed the daily GitHub submission rates of Polkadot and Cardano to become the leading blockchain over the past month. The number of daily GitHub submissions for Solana reached 90 between Nov. 12 and Dec. 13, followed by Polkadot at 76, and Cardano at 65.

The surge in on-chain development activity for Solana comes in the wake of a recent DDoS attack on Dec. 9 that slowed down the network considerably. The fifth-largest blockchain managed to mitigate the issues without a network shutdown, but it raised serious concerns over network vulnerability.

A DDoS attack refers to a coordinated botnet targeted activity that overwhelms a network with fake traffic. Many experts blamed the coordinated DDoS attack on fundamental design flaws and Solana’s Proof-of-History (PoH) consensus mechanism. Earlier, a Grayscale Investment report also flagged Solana’s PoH use and said:

“The Solana consensus mechanism uses a new blockchain technology that is not widely used, and may not function as intended. There may be flaws in the cryptography underlying the network, including flaws that affect the functionality of the Solana Network or make the network vulnerable to attack.”

In September, the Solana network faced a similar issue when a sudden surge in transaction volume led to a network outage that lasted nearly 17-hours. The engineers at the time failed to resolve the issue and validators had to eventually restart the network.

The Solana blockchain has emerged as one of the fastest-growing smart contract networks in 2021 and a growing choice for upcoming decentralized finance and nonfungible token projects. The project's growing popularity has often drawn comparisons with Ethereum and has been dubbed the “Ethereum-killer” by some. However, growing concerns over the fundamentals of the network could prove problematic in the long run.

Solana was eyeing a new all-time high above $200 before the DDoS attack but slumped to a weekly low of $164.15. SOL is currently trading at $165.20 with a 1.3% decline over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.