Jupiter to Upgrade Backend Systems Next Week to Address Network Congestion

The upgrade is designed to accommodate the increasing number of new tokens on Jupiter and Solana in response to users of the decentralized exchange aggregator experiencing transaction difficulties.

Jupiter announced early Friday that it will be rolling out an upgrade for its backend systems next week to improve scaling and to address congestion issues faced by users of the Solana-based decentralized exchange aggregator. 

According to the Jupiter team on X, the backend systems upgrade, which has been in the works for months, aims to address the increase of new tokens,which has led to “delays in new markets being picked up.” The backend systems of a crypto protocol refers to the software components that are not responsible for rendering an interface for end users to interact with, but rather the infrastructure components for managing the blockchain network and processing transactions.

Read More: Jupiter Token Reaches All-Time High Amid Controversial Governance Vote to Allocate 4.5 Million JUP to Core Working Group

The announcement comes after a recent boom in memecoin trading placed unprecedented pressure on the network.  Furthermore, several programmatic trading bots, which are unsuccessfully executing arbitrage token swaps in the overall Solana ecosystem, are  the network and causing an uptick in transactions failing. 

“We are upgrading our infrastructure to support the influx of new tokens into the ecosystem,” wrote Siong Ong, the co-founder of Jupiter, in a private message to Unchained via X. “[The] main thing is to allow people to swap as soon as a new token shows up.”

Some members of Jupiter’s Discord have noted a series of failed transactions. “What’s happening to Solana, my mind is going crazy. I cannot do any transactions for the past day, help us all,” said one onchain user, who goes by “NodeJs.”  Another, who does by “SikDad,” wrote, “Does anyone know why I cannot move my JUP tokens from the phantom wallet? I keep getting transaction failed?”

Read More: 75% of Solana Transactions Are Failing as Bots Dominate Swap Count

“Massive [infrastructure] upgrade happening across the board starting next week to handle staggering network congestion, explosion of markets and insane amounts of token spam [and] scams,” the co-founder of Jupiter, who goes by “Meow,” wrote on X. “We will aim to minimize interruptions but some glitches still might happen here and there.”

As the second largest gas consumer on the Solana blockchain network, according to blockchain analytics firm Artemis, Jupiter’s woes bring into focus how Solana’s scalability has long been a point of contention. One user, who goes by @George_Orama, started a discussion in the r/Solana subreddit during 2022 that was titled, “If Solana is so scalable, why does it have so many outages.”

While the network is currently not suffering an outage, like it did in February this year, “performance sucks,” at the moment, admitted Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of the Solana-based developer firm, Helius. Though, “fixes are coming soon,” he noted.

The price of JUP, the native governance token for Jupiter, has decreased 14.1% in the past 24 hours to $1.35, data from CoinGecko shows.