The Solana price remained steady on Feb. 6 as the layer 1 network experienced an outage that lasted five hours. SOL is slightly up, rising 0.31% over the last 24 hours to trade at $95.6.
This shows that traders were unbothered by what was happening on-chain as core engineers assured the users that the issue was being solved.
What happened?
The Solana network experienced a minor service outage on Tuesday, Feb. 6 at 10.25 ET. The incident lasted roughly five hours. The team behind Solana said it is investigating the root cause and will soon share its report on the matter.
The team said in an X post,
“Block production on Solana mainnet beta resumed at 14:57 UTC, following a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators. Engineers will continue to monitor performance as network operations are restored.”
Block production on Solana mainnet beta resumed at 14:57 UTC, following a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators. Engineers will continue to monitor performance as network operations are restored.
The outage began at approximately…
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) February 6, 2024
Outages on the Solana network are not new. The layer 1 blockchain has experienced outages in the past with the network encountering close to 22 incidences of disruptions and downtimes in 2022. The network did not experience a single network outage incident in 2023; the Feb. 6 incident is the first this year.
The smart contract based on proof-of-stake blockchain distinguishes itself as one of the few protocols not compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). However, the outages raise doubts about whether it is ready to come out as a serious “Ethereum killer.”
After the Feb. 6 outage, Solana’s native token SOL, briefly dipped to about $93.63 before rebounding. At the time of writing, it trades at $95.6.
Can Solana price rise above $100?
Solana’s meteoric rise in 2023 saw it set a swing high at $126. Profit-taking and buyer exhaustion saw the price turn down from this level, plummeting 37% to $78. This level provided a launchpad for recovery that has seen SOL rise approximately 36% to set a local high at $106 before retracing to the current price.
The bulls will now try to push the price above the coveted $100 mark. If this happens, SOL will move higher to revisit the local high at $106. A daily candlestick close above this level would bolster the bulls to take the price toward the multi-year high at $126. Such a move would represent a 33% uptick from the current price.
SOL/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView Chart
On the downside, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) was facing downward, suggesting that the sellers had begun entering the market. As such, a daily candlestick close below the 50-day exponential moving average at $91 would spell doom for the SOL token with the 100-day EMA at $78 providing the first line of defense.
Additional support lines could emerge from the $70 psychological level and the 200-day EMA at $61.
