Solana Survives One of the Largest DDoS Attacks in Internet History Without Disruption

Solana has successfully navigated through one of the most significant distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks ever documented, showing no noticeable effect on its network performance.

Key Takeaways:

Solana withstood a massive 6 Tbps DDoS attack without any disruption.
This event ranks as one of the largest DDoS attacks ever seen on the internet.
The incident demonstrates the increasing resilience of Solana’s network infrastructure.

The attack, which persisted for over a week, reached a peak strength of almost 6 terabits per second (Tbps), making it the fourth largest DDoS attack in internet history according to information released by SolanaFloor.

Despite the scale of the attack, metrics indicate that Solana continued to operate normally, completing transactions with confirmations under one second and maintaining stable slot latency throughout the duration.

Solana Withstands One of the Largest DDoS Attacks in Internet History With No Network Disruption

Solana Joins the Ranks of Tech Giants in DDoS History

Charts that accompanied the announcement illustrate that the DDoS incident involving Solana aligns with notable attacks on major centralized infrastructure providers such as Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.

While these previous attacks varied in size from 2.3 Tbps to peaks of 46 Tbps, Solana's experience of similar traffic volumes is a rare instance for a public blockchain facing threats comparable to those seen by traditional internet services.

Validators and the core infrastructure were able to handle the surge in traffic without any effect on performance, confirming claims that Solana’s technology has advanced significantly since earlier bouts of congestion.

In a related incident, the Sui network encountered a DDoS attack just one day prior, which led to delays in block production and reduced performance.

A DDoS attack aims to overwhelm a network, website, or system with excessive traffic to disrupt its regular functioning. Attackers deploy large groups of compromised devices (known as a botnet) to send simultaneous junk requests, flooding the target with data. The intention isn’t to steal data but to slow down the system, cause outages, or render services unavailable.

DDoS attacks are common in the cryptocurrency space. Last year, the Cardano network faced an attempted DDoS attack that began at block 10,487,530, which aimed to manipulate the blockchain into reducing fees for high-value transactions.

Similarly, the layer-2 blockchain Manta experienced a DDoS attack shortly after it successfully listed its Manta token on multiple trading platforms last year.

Solana Faces Liquidity Challenges Amid Losses

As reported recently, Solana is entering a challenging period as on-chain data points indicate decreasing liquidity and declining profitability.

According to Glassnode data, the 30-day realized profit-to-loss ratio for the network has remained below 1 since mid-November. This metric typically signifies bearish conditions, as it indicates that traders are often realizing losses rather than profits, suggesting a weakening market sentiment.

Analysts from Altcoin Vector characterize the situation as a “full liquidity reset,” an phase that has historically served as the starting point for new liquidity cycles and, in some cases, market bottoms.

While volatility remains high in the near term, analysts suggest that conditions could see stabilization within the coming weeks, potentially setting the stage for recovery by early January if the trend follows historical patterns.

Meanwhile, as demand for Solana's capabilities grows, Web3 infrastructure provider Alchemy has rebuilt its Solana stack from scratch, aiming to offer near-zero downtime, quicker transaction speeds, and improved scalability.