Ore won $50,000 in USD Coins at the “Solana Renaissance Hackathon” held May 6, impressing the judges, who focused on finding Solana’s “next wave of high-impact projects.” However, this award has become controversial due to the problems the project recently caused in the Solana network.

In mid-April, the Solana network faced a significant transaction failure issue. The sudden increase in Ore mining transactions and the “memecoin” craze that has become popular recently were cited as two of the main reasons for this problem. Due to congestion, more than 70% of non-voting action requests failed on the first try. This seriously affected the availability of the network and created great dissatisfaction among users.

Solana Foundation mentioned two reasons behind this problem. The first is the high demand for Solana block space. Secondly, the necessary patches regarding the network infrastructure are not applied in a timely manner. These missing patches made the network more vulnerable to congestion.

Taking action to fix the problem, Solana developers announced that they plan to implement a fix on April 15. However, it is difficult to say that the problem is completely solved. According to the Dune Analytics dashboard by Scarn_eth, the non-voting transaction failure rate continues to hover around 62%. This shows that the network is still not fully recovered and the transaction failure problem remains.

Following these problems, the Ore project temporarily stopped its mining operations on April 16, just 13 days after its launch. The aim of the project was to optimize their system and ensure smoother operation with a second version. According to Ore’s website, mining operations appear to have restarted.

The creator of the project, nicknamed Hardhat Chad, stated that he was pleased to win the first prize in the hackathon. But he also added that he and the Ore team have a “long way to go” before they can offer Solana users “a digital currency that’s fast, cheap, private, inflation-proof and anyone can mine it.” This statement shows that the Ore team will continue to work to achieve the long-term goals of the project.

As a result, the Ore project, which won first prize at the Solana Renaissance Hackathon, is at the center of the problems recently experienced in the Solana network. This situation brings the balance between the potential risks and benefits of innovative projects in the cryptocurrency world back to the agenda. The Ore team should try to achieve this balance by paying more attention to the stability of the network when developing its project in the coming period. At the same time, the Solana Foundation must take the necessary steps to prevent similar problems from occurring again by strengthening the infrastructure of the network.