The Solana network reported a large-scale DDoS attack, happening over the course of last week. The attack had consequences for the network, although Solana apps kept functioning.
Solana registered one of the biggest DDoS attacks in Internet history, with 6 Tbps in requests at the peak of traffic. The chain saw smaller, but ongoing spam traffic for the past few days.
The attack is one of the biggest for 2025, after CloudFlare reported a 7.3 Tbps attack in June. By recent estimates, Solana suffered the fourth-largest attack for the past year.
The long-running DD0S attack has been mounted over the course of the past week, although Solana users have not felt the difference. Solana influencers noted the network seemed unaffected by the requests.
The DDoS attack against a decentralized network is spreading as a new threat. SUI also announced an attack in the past day, delaying block production. Users reported degraded performance for SUI, possibly due to a low number of validators.
The attack itself cannot affect the ledger, but can overload the infrastructure of nodes, validators, and RPC providers.
Solana did not suffer a network outage
The DDoS attack did not affect Solana block production, or interfere with the outage. The chain has over 830 validators, which are enough to achieve consensus.
SUI, on the other hand, relies on around 100 validators, and the attack has led to degraded performance. The chain’s team reported the problem has been resolved, and the network was only temporarily affected.
Solana influencers warned about validator capacity, as the biggest validators have provided backup to their services in the case of an attack. On-chain data shows the performance of the network is not degraded under the current attack. There are no block missed slots or confirmation delays, and transactions still settle in under one second.
The Solana DDoS arrived just as the chain was running its Breakpoint event in Abu Dhabi. The chain also managed to adopt the Firedancer node client, going live at a time when the chain was under attack.
Are DDoS attacks a catastrophe for blockchains?
DDoS attacks are more often targeting Web 2.0 platforms to send a specific message. Attacks against decentralized networks are relatively rare. There are no estimations on who targeted Solana.
Chains have multiple tools to adapt to potential attacks, including a sufficient number of nodes, backups, and DDoS protection. Over the years since the creation of Bitcoin, there were few attempts to attack a network in this manner. Solana, however, remained a high-profile competitive chain, potentially inviting attempts to undermine its infrastructure.
Decentralized networks proved to be resilient, as the attack did not lead to catastrophic outages. Solana is still raising more concerns about its internal attacks, mostly sandwiching transactions.
In the past 30 days, those attacks led to over 1,000 SOL extracted from traders, with a total of over 47K sandwiched transactions.
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