Hetzner, a German data center provider, has begun to ban Solana validators since the company’s rules of service forbid any cryptocurrency-related activities.
Over 20% of stake weight on Solana’s mainnet has been late, with thousands of validators down, according to pool operator SolBlaze.
Hetzner has not released a formal statement on the subject as of the time of publication, however, a company representative from Gunzenhausen stated in August, in response to a Reddit question and answer session, stating that the company has very restrictive policies toward cryptocurrency mining.
“We do not permit anything related to ‘mining services’ for cryptocurrencies.” Hetzner wrote in a Reddit message. “This includes mining/farming and plotting in particular, but also the operation of nodes, storage of blockchain data, and trading in cryptocurrency.”
While Hetzner does not “preemptively reject them,” according to the German data firm, these words are implied by the fact that the company thinks non-crypto blockchains will become more significant in the future.
“However, due to the problems in this area, we currently want to completely exclude everything that has to do with cryptocurrency, including nodes and blockchain data.”
Software for proof-of-work networks as well as proof-of-stake and other networks are among the constraints.
To ensure a smooth and functional operation, blockchain networks rely on their validators. When a significant portion of these validators stops working, the entire blockchain becomes at risk of going through an outage.
A similar incident occurred in Solana, which unexpectedly lost 1.000 of its validators after having its access to servers blocked.
After the block by Hetzner, over 1.000 Solana network validators went offline, causing more than 20% of the blockchain to lose a significant connection to the overall network.
Data from the infrastructure RockawayX panel show that the inadvertent participation rate of the Solana network reached 22%, which is the highest since May of this year.
The data refers to the percentage of Solana’s participation that is now inoperative; in this context, the phrase “inoperative” refers to a validator that is offline.
The majority of Solana Validators Are in Germany
The Solana Foundation published a report on the state of the blockchain in August. The network reportedly comprises of 3,400 individuals spread out over the globe but is concentrated in Germany with 21% of validators, followed by the US with just over 20%, and Ireland with 9.5%.