Key Notes
Network metrics showed median transaction confirmations at 450 milliseconds and slot latency at 0-1 slots throughout the attack.
Solana suffered three DDoS-related outages in 2021-2022, including a 17-hour shutdown in September 2021.
The attack scale falls below the largest 2025 DDoS incidents, with Cloudflare reporting mitigated attacks exceeding 29 Tbps.
Solana absorbed a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack peaking at approximately 6 terabits per second over multiple weeks without any network degradation, according to co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.
The attack occurred despite Solana’s history of DDoS-induced outages in 2021-2022.
Related article: What is Solana: a Comprehensive Guide to the High-Performance Blockchain
Yakovenko disclosed the attack on Dec. 9 and described the assault as the worst active threat against the network, according to his X post.
Network timing remained unaffected, with slot latency at zero throughout. He characterized the situation as bullish and suggested that attackers were spending roughly as much as the chain generates in revenue just to send it traffic.
Median 0 slot latency is the best breakpoint present. The 6 tbs ddos is the worst. Come on man, knock it off. Isn’t easier to launch a token instead. pic.twitter.com/YPFInpkHUZ
— toly ?? (@aeyakovenko) December 9, 2025
Infrastructure provider Pipe Network corroborated the performance claims, reporting that median transaction confirmations held at approximately 450 milliseconds with p90 confirmations under 700 milliseconds throughout the attack period.
Pipe Network noted that a 6 Tbps volumetric attack typically translates to billions of packets per second directed at network infrastructure.
The ongoing DDoS attack on @solana is one of the largest in internet history.
6 Tbps volumetric attack translates to billions of packets per second.
Under that kind of load, you’d normally expect rising latency, missed slots, or confirmation delays.
Instead, data shows:
•… https://t.co/QxpzOBOSh2 pic.twitter.com/P601xSgHiE— Pipe Network (@pipenetwork) December 16, 2025
Years After Outage Criticism
The current attack contrasts sharply with Solana’s 2021-2022 experience, when similar DDoS incidents caused extended network failures. A May 2022 attack marked theseventh network outage that year, fueling criticism of the chain’s reliability.
A September 2021 attack during a token sale event took the network offline for 17 hours. Additional incidents followed in December 2021 and January 2022, prompting questions about the network’s centralization and architectural fragility.
Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz noted that the network withstood weeks of sustained attack, with users remaining unaware of the assault due to engineering improvements.
solana has been under a colossal DDoS attack for at least over a week now btw
the fact that you havent experienced it is a big testament to the level of engineering present here
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) December 15, 2025
The network has not reported an outage since May 2023. Infrastructure upgrades have included Firedancer, a validator client designed to boost network performance, built by Jump Crypto.
Attack Scale in Context
While substantial, the 6 Tbps attack falls short of the largest DDoS incidents recorded this year. Cloudflare mitigated attacks exceeding 29.7 Tbps in the third quarter of 2025, primarily from the Aisuru botnet. Microsoft Azure blocked a 15.72 Tbps attack targeting Australian infrastructure in October.
Several details remain unclear regarding the attack. The methodology used to measure the 6 Tbps figure has not been disclosed publicly. The identity of the attackers remains unknown, and their motivation has not been established.
The Solana Foundation has not issued an official statement regarding the incident, though the network’s official status page shows no reported incidents for December 2025.
Despite this, SOL’s price appears largely unaffected. Solana has also logged strong network activity, recently hitting an all-time high of roughly $380,000 in daily x402 payment volume, with around 750% week-on-week growth.
