Yesterday, users of the highly scalable blockchain, Solana, began to notice some issues on the Layer 1 platform, which left many wondering about its cause. It was not a hack attack from faceless interlopers as might have been initially feared. Instead, it was the result of an oversubscribed Initial Dex Offering (IDO) by the popular Play-to-Earn (P2E) game SolChicks, which was hosting a token sale on Raydium (an Automated Market Maker and liquidity provider built on the Solana blockchain). 

SolChicks has been soaring in popularity in recent weeks, and its social media followership has grown astronomically in recent weeks. By the time its IDO was launched on Solana, interest in the game and its token were at an all-time high.

The native token of the SolChicks universe, $CHICKS, was launched on MEXC exchange and Raydium on the 13th of December at 14:00 UTC. During the Token Generation Event (TGE), the high demand for the tokens triggered a new round of issues for Solana and the IDO platform hosted on it, Raydium.

During the token sale, the Solana network became congested and validators were struggling to verify transactions. This was, in part, linked to people using bots to participate in SolChicks’ IDO launch on Raydium. Within a short while, the IDO was oversubscribed.

Solana has, in recent times, encountered congestion issues whenever a popular crypto startup is hosting a token launch or sale on IDO platforms like Raydium. A few days ago, the network faced a similar issue during a token launch on Raydium. 

These issues come after the Solana network was shut down for hours in September. The SolChicks effect of yesterday was more pronounced than the occurrence in September. 

Why did SolChicks’ IDO Lead to a Congestion Issue

Only a few IDO launches have culminated in a congestion issue for validators, and one of them is SolChicks. SolChicks is a fantasy NFT PvP and P2E gaming ecosystem that is based on the Solana network. At the moment, it is one of the first-ever Play-to-Earn ecosystems on Solana that is integrating the concept of metaverse into its architecture.  The game is based on the SolChick NFT collectibles, while having intriguing gameplay. It is not surprising that its token sale was oversubscribed on Raydium.

SolChicks announced on their official Twitter page that the Raydium server had crashed. During that period, SolScan was unable to display the contract address of the Play-to-Earn platform.

(Thread 1/2)
CHICKS HAVE TAKEN SOLANA DOWN 🐣

We apologize for the inconvenience of this delay but tens of thousands of people are trying to buy $CHICKS and the Raydium server has crashed. It appears SolScan is also not loading our contract address right now either. pic.twitter.com/WX0uqKlgZR

— SolChicks (@SolChicksNFT) December 13, 2021

SolChicks also announced on the second tweet of the thread that it was working tirelessly to inject more liquidity into its liquidity pool.  

Through its Twitter page, Raydium tried to shed more light on the Solana congestion issues. According to them, a bot attack directed at a project attempting to launch a permissionless liquidity pool on Raydium was linked to the congestion faced on Solana. They went on to state that the Solana TPS was improving. 

At 14:00 UTC a project attempted to launch a permissionless pool on Raydium, however it immediately met w heavy bot spam transactions leading to network congestion & TPS slowdown for several hours

Solana TPS is picking up but if you saw slow/failed txns this is the primary cause

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 14, 2021

At the time of writing this, Solana had not released an official statement concerning its Congestion issues linked to the IDO launch of SolChicks on Raydium. Solana Labs’ co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, had made a tweet asking the Solana validators to update their nodes. 

hey @solana testnet validators, wtf haven’t you updated your nodes to 1.8.10 yet. sheesh, check discord

— anat◎ly 🦀🤿🏒 🤙 (@aeyakovenko) December 14, 2021

He also retweeted a tweet from @muratbeyimiz stating that Solana was working effectively, though the transaction speed had become slower. 

@aeyakovenko Solana works just fine. Confirmations take longer than usual, but overall still faster than well everything.

— Muratbeyimiz (@muratbeyimiz) December 13, 2021

With this latest incident on Solana, people are wondering if it will become recurrent. To counter any fears, Solana would need to set out, in due course, its plans to address the network capacity issues in the long term. 

Source: Defi Planet – https://defi-planet.com/2021/12/solchicks-token-launch-breaks-solana/