Coinbase users have complained of hours-long delays in Solana transactions as network congestion related to US President Donald Trump’s launch of memecoin on January 18 impacted the cryptocurrency exchange.
“The cryptocurrency exchange team is working hard to scale our Solana infra now,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a Jan. 19 post on Platform X.
“A lot of activity in Solana the last few days, we didn’t expect this level of increase,” Armstrong added.
Solana users experienced network difficulties following the recent launch of memecoin by Trump and his wife Melania, ahead of the president’s official inauguration on January 20.
Coinbase CEO on Solana transaction delays. Source: Brian Armstrong
Coinbase’s delays appear to be at least partly unrelated to those of Solana, with some users saying the exchange’s settlement times were hours behind the blockchain network. On January 20, user X described a 15-hour transaction delay on Coinbase.
“Coinbase estimates 100 minutes to process USDC receipts on Solana,” said Mert Mumtaz, CEO of infrastructure provider Solana Helius, in a January 20 X article.
“To be clear, this has nothing to do with the channel,” Mumtaz said, referring to Solana.
Representatives for Coinbase did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s requests for comment.
Executives say Coinbase’s delays are not solely due to Solana. Source: Mert Mumtaz
Peak activity
The Trump advisory team launched the Official Trump memecoin (TRUMP) on January 18 and the Official Melania token (MELANIA) on January 19 on the Solana network, ahead of Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20.
Memecoin launches brought significant trading volume to Solana, apparently causing congestion on the network.
Moonshot, the platform that Trump pointed his followers to to purchase the memecoin, has reported more than 200,000 new on-chain users since the token’s launch. Coinbase is the most popular cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.
Despite reported congestion errors and some failed transactions, Solana has shown 100% uptime over the past 90 days, with no outages since February 6, 2024, according to data on the Solana status page.
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