The Solana blockchain is witnessing an exceptionally high rate of failed transactions amid massive trading volumes that has led to network congestion.

It’s been a hard day for users of Solana, the high speed blockchain that has seen explosive growth over the last few weeks, with three out of four transactions on the network failing to execute as planned.

Data from Dune compiled by “@scarn_eth” shows that 75.3% of non-vote transactions on Solana had failed on April 4. A non-vote transaction refers to a movement of SOL between different Solana accounts.

Critics took aim at the blockchain over its claim of scalability, which they argued was most certainly not the case as an increase in usage had led to high levels of congestion. 

Meanwhile, Solana proponents noted that the volume and unique users on the network had exploded by a factor of ten, arguing that periods of extreme congestions were simply “part of the process.”

The uptick in failed transactions comes at a time when trading volumes on Solana are booming, largely driven by the interest in trading memecoins – some of which are associated with questionable themes. 

The memecoin hype is likely responsible for trading activity that has been dominated by bots, which spam the network in an attempt to make an arbitrage trade. The problem, however, is that when this arbitrage doesn’t exist, the smart contract does not respond as expected and the transaction is not successfully executed. 

scarn_eth’s data also shows that bots dominated the number of swaps on Solana at the time of writing, accounting for 55% of the total swap count or $30.2 million of the total volume. 

“Take Solana txn volume with a bowl of salt. I believe I’ve used rather forgiving parameters in measuring bots,” said scarn_eth when first creating the Dune dashboard in December.

Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz explained that bots spam better than humans, meaning that its user transactions end up getting dropped given that a block leader can only handle so many transactions at once.

btw, that failed transactions chart that keeps showing up is not a good way of assessing user impact as most users don’t make it there to begin with lol

(they get dropped before they are on chain)

about 95% of that entire chart is just bots failing arbitrage attempts

— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) April 4, 2024