Over 1,000 Solana Validators Go Offline After Cloud Provider Cuts them Off

Over 1,000 validators of the Solana blockchain went offline yesterday after their cloud provider cut them off, preventing more than a fifth of the Solana stake from earning rewards.

Solana’s blockchain validators earn SOL for processing transactions and verifying the state of the network, then distribute those rewards among stakers. When validators go offline, they turn “delinquent” and stakers stop earning rewards.

That’s what happened when a cloud service provider, Hetzner, blocked all Solana network activity on its servers yesterday. Earlier this year, Hetzner said that running crypto nodes on its servers breached its terms of service.

While Solana has suffered many outages since its launch, Hetzner’s decision didn’t send the blockchain offline, according to Solana’s status website. 

Anatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana Labs, the entity behind the blockchain, tweeted that affected stakers should move their coins to validators that do not use Hetzner. 

“Host your validator on a crypto friendly provider. Don’t go with the cheapest,” advised Guilherme Alberto, CEO of server company Latitude.sh.

Twitter user StakeWithPride warned that Hetzner remains the second-largest Internet service provider for Cardano nodes. Midas, a crypto influencer, suggested that Cosmos validators running on Hetzner use a different provider.