Solana Neared a Transaction Halt After a 33-Minute Provider Outage

TeraSwitch routing failure took 28.83% of staked Solana offline

On 12 August, a routing failure at infrastructure provider TeraSwitch disconnected a large group of Solana validators at the same moment. The affected validators held 28.83% of all staked SOL, the token that secures the Solana network. Marinade Finance, a liquid staking provider on Solana, first reported the scale of the disruption. Secondary outlets, including CoinDesk, later confirmed the core figures. Validators are the computers that confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain.

The outage neared Solana's 33.34% finality threshold

Solana marks a transaction as final once validators holding about two-thirds of staked SOL agree on it. Once a transaction is final, it cannot be reversed. If more than 33.34% of the stake goes offline, the network can still produce blocks but stops confirming them as irreversible. The 28.83% that dropped left a margin of about 4.5 percentage points before that limit. The network kept finalising transactions throughout the incident.

Roughly 90 validators dropped through one network

About 90 validators went offline together, according to Marinade Finance. TeraSwitch's autonomous system (AS), a network identified as AS20326, carried 118.9 million SOL, or 27.34% of the total stake. During the outage, 94% of that amount disconnected at once. A single routing fault at one provider therefore turned into a network-wide event, because so much stake ran through the same infrastructure. Staked SOL is the collateral that gives each validator its voting weight in consensus, so losing that many validators at once cut deeply into the network's active stake.

Routing recovered in 33 minutes with limited losses

TeraSwitch restored routing after about 33 minutes, and the validators rejoined the network. During the downtime, they missed roughly 333 SOL in staking rewards, according to Marinade Finance. No transactions were reversed, and the network did not halt. The critical level was ultimately not reached, and normal operation continued once the connection came back.

Marinade flagged infrastructure concentration as the core risk

Marinade Finance described the event as an example of infrastructure concentration risk. As of 22 July, TeraSwitch serviced validators holding about 27.1% of staked SOL, ahead of UAB Cherry Servers at 12.7% and Latitude.sh at 11%. Marinade said it plans to review limits on how validators spread across providers, data centres, and backup systems. Some operators already split their setup across hosts. Coinbase has said 13 of its validators run through TeraSwitch and another 10 through Latitude, with backup servers in separate locations.

Solana traded near $76 at the time of publication

SOL traded at $76.07 at the time of publication, up 0.9% over the past 24 hours (CoinPaprika, 12 August 2026). The token's market value stood near $44.3 billion, and it remained about 74% below its January 2025 record high. Solana has faced repeated infrastructure strain before. In November 2022, a Hetzner disconnection affected roughly 40% of validators holding about 20% of staked coins, and the network kept running. Active Solana validators fell to about 800 in January 2026, the lowest level since 2021, down from more than 2,500 at the 2023 peak.