{"id":2507,"date":"2021-12-13T10:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T10:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/odwstage.com\/omniatech\/?p=2507"},"modified":"2023-05-21T21:51:21","modified_gmt":"2023-05-21T21:51:21","slug":"solana-chain-ddos-and-the-problem-of-centralization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omniatech.io\/pages\/solana-chain-ddos-and-the-problem-of-centralization\/","title":{"rendered":"Solana Chain DDoS and the problem of Centralization"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/span> 3<\/span> min read<\/span><\/span>\n

In one of our previous article (see here<\/a>), we have discussed the plague within the current blockchain ecosystems that almost everyone had thought to be decentralized. Unfortunately, reality does not favor the ideology and theory behind the promising technology. Therefore, we are hard-pressed to find a solution to mitigate the problem as much as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s Solana?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brief introduction
<\/strong>Solana is an open-source project that promises a new, high-performance, permissionless blockchain. The Solana Foundation is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and maintains the open-source project. The company promotes itself as the \u201cEthereum Killer,\u201d capitalizing on the faster transaction speed, higher transactions per second, and the lower cost per transaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does it work?
<\/strong>Solana takes a very different approach, also known as Proof of History<\/em> or PoH<\/em>. Leader nodes “timestamp” blocks with cryptographic proofs that a small timeframe has passed since the last proof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All data hashed into the proof most certainly have occurred before blockchain generated the proof. The node then shares the new block with validator nodes, verifying those proofs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A user can become a node validator in the Solana network by staking SOL and providing the minimum hardware requirement. Then, a leader is selected out of a group of validator nodes for a given time slot to generate the Proof of History.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

DDos attacks and consequences
<\/strong>Solana\u2019s blockchain performance was reported<\/a> to be hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on December 10th. However, the network appears to have remained online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A DDoS attack generally refers to many coordinated devices, or a botnet, overwhelming a network with fake traffic to take it offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This incident wouldn\u2019t be the first time Solana has suffered this issue. For example, Cointelegraph reported<\/a> in September that the network suffered a 17-hour-outage due to mass botting activity for an initial DEX offering (IDO) Solana-based decentralized exchange platform Raydium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possible explanation
<\/strong>For the duration of a time slot, all transactions received by the cluster are forwarded to the leader. However, the list of validators is known in advance and even published on the Solana Beach dashboard. Therefore, a botnet can compute this list and start attacking the up-and-coming validators before working on the transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter how many Solana validators the network has: The network selects one validator to be the exclusive propagator of transactions for a particular time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The requirement to become a Solana node validator is also rather steep in terms of monetary value:<\/p>\n\n\n\n