Solana Refuted The Poor Safety Rating From DEFi Watchdog

Solana refuted the poor safety rating from the DEFI watchdog Defi Safety after the report cited concerns about the network’s crash-prone architecture so let’s read more today in our latest blockchain news.

Solana refuted the poor safety claims made by DeFi Safety, an independent DeFi rating organization that ranked Solana is the second-worst according to the company’s criteria. Axie Infinity’s gaming platform and Ronin blockchain were ranked as the worst after the Ronn hack of $600 million in March 2022. The Montreal-based agency rated over 240 DEFI protocols and 15 different blockchains and its reviews included five-different criteria like node count and diversity, supporting software, documentation, testing, and security. DeFi safety explained:

“DeFi Safety does not perform code audits. Instead, we review the quality of process and documentation behind the code, of which audits are only a part.”

4/28 It is still unclear where the chain stores its history – there have been no documented updates on the Solar bridge after archives were abandoned.https://t.co/g9fW2Lvsfc

— DeFiSafety (@DefiSafety) June 7, 2022

Defi Safety’s primary reasons for a low rating revolve around Solana’s poor node infrastrcuture and the frequent downtimes. Other reasons include improper handling of the node information, poor block explorer design, and unaudited node clients with less diversity than the competing blockchains. Defi safety raised many concerns about the lack of details about the network’s node archival which is one of the processes for storing the blockchain data since its inception.

There’s no clear documentation on the node archival except the year-old Reddit thread from the co-founder of solana, Anatoly Yakovenko. However, the head of communications at Solana, Austin Federa said this is not necessary for solana:

“Solana does not require knowledge back to genesis to validate a block.”

As for the node clients, Defi safety argued that Solana doesn’t have enough offerings and that a node client is a software that lets users connect their computers to the blockchain network and validate and execute transactions. Right now, Solana offers a piece of software for the node operators which has not been audited since 2019 while Ethereum offers seven different execution clients and six consensus clients. Federa added:

“Only one node implementation; this is accurate and valid. Solana Foundation is working to diversify validator clients. Several top-tier block explorers are being built by the community the majority of which are less than 18 months old. In that time, their UX and functionality have greatly improved to meet the needs of builders and users.”

The report stated that some Solana validators started censoring transactions but Solana Labs denied this and called it synonymous with miner extractible value in ETH.