The Solana Story · Module 3 · 2021 to 2022 · 35 min
In 2021 Solana’s price rose enormously and NFTs and DeFi apps poured in, but the network also went down several times under the load, which became its main criticism.
What you will learn
Describe the 2021 rise and what drove it.
Explain what an outage is and why Solana had several.
Say why uptime matters for trust in a network.
The lessons
Lesson 1: The 2021 boom
From a very low starting point at the start of 2021, SOL’s price rose many times over during the year, reaching a peak near $260 in November 2021. It was one of the best-performing large coins of that year.
Several things came together. NFTs went mainstream and Solana’s low fees suited them. DeFi apps grew. Big investors and well-known funds backed the ecosystem. And the whole crypto market was rising.
A rising price is not proof of a better network. Everything in crypto was climbing that year, and when the mood changed the fall was equally dramatic.
Remember: In a boom almost everything goes up. That says little about which projects are strong.
Lesson 2: The outages
A network outage means the blockchain stops producing blocks, and nobody can send transactions until the validators restart it. On 14 September 2021 Solana stopped for about 17 hours after a flood of bot transactions, aimed at grabbing spots in a popular token sale, overwhelmed it.
Further stalls followed in 2022, each lasting several hours, caused by things like bot-driven NFT minting or software bugs. In each case the validators had to coordinate and restart the chain.
Critics argued that a network with that many outages could not be called decentralised or reliable. Supporters argued that these were growing pains that the developers were fixing, and that no funds were lost.
Remember: Speed was only valuable if the network stayed up.
Lesson 3: Why uptime matters
If you use a bank app and it goes down, you are annoyed. If you use a financial app on a blockchain and it goes down, you may be unable to move your money at a moment when prices are moving fast.
Bitcoin has kept producing blocks since 2009, and Ethereum since 2015, with no network-wide halt of the kind Solana had. That track record is a big part of why people trust them. A newer network has to build the same record, one year without incident at a time.
When you read about any network, check not only how fast it is but also how long it has run without a stop, and how it dealt with the last problem.
Remember: Reliability is earned over years, not claimed in a launch post.
Key dates
When
What happened
Why it matters
2021
SOL rises many times over during the year
A year of fast growth in NFTs and DeFi
14 September 2021
A network stall of about 17 hours
The first big outage, caused by a flood of bot traffic
November 2021
SOL peaks near $260
The top of the 2021 market
2022
Several more outages, each of a few hours
Reliability becomes the main criticism
Key terms: outage, congestion, bot, NFT, validator, restart. Open the glossary
Module quiz
4 questions. Tap an answer to see if you are right and why.
1. Roughly where did SOL peak in November 2021?
The 2021 peak was near $260.
2. What caused the 14 September 2021 outage?
The network stalled for about 17 hours and had to be restarted.
3. Why do outages hurt trust?
Reliability is earned over years.
4. Did the 2021 rise prove Solana was better than other networks?
A rising market lifts almost everything.
Do it yourself
Search for the current status page of any major blockchain and see how many incidents it lists in the past year. Write down how you would decide whether a network’s record is good enough to trust.
Not financial advice. This lesson is history and education only. Prices are rounded and shown only to explain how big the swings were.