Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has intermittently suspended withdrawals to the Solana network due to an “increased volume of transactions.”
Binance expects to implement a solution and resume withdrawals starting March 9, according to a Binance announcement released on March 6.
“Withdrawals on the Solana (SOL) network have been intermittently suspended since 2024-03-04 due to the increased volume of transactions on the network. Binance has identified some areas for optimization and is working to provide a stable and long-term solution. The estimated implementation date of the solution is 2024-03-09 18:00 (UTC),” the announcement states.
Solana’s (SOL) token fell 0.68% in the 24 hours leading up to 10:40 am UTC to change hands at $130.81, according to CoinMarketCap data. The token is up over 17% on the weekly chart.
Binance and some of the most prominent crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, Kraken and Bybit, suffered performance issues last week.
The outages have mainly been caused by growing retail interest, paired with growing workloads from algorithmic trading firms, Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, the chief strategy officer and technical lead for trading at the dYdX exchange, told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview.
“Because there’s so much retail interest and the price action is moving so fast, all of the algorithmic trading firms are vastly increasing the rate of order placements and cancels they want to send to the matching engine to maintain their positions […] It’s common for a trading firm to 20 times the output of orders and cancels at a very busy time,” he said.
Binance’s notice of increased trading volumes comes a day after Bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $69,200 on March 5. Bitcoin’s market capitalization briefly surpassed the market cap of silver on March 5, with Bitcoin temporarily becoming the world’s eighth-largest asset.
Despite the recent performance issues, Binance received the Cyber Security Professional Merit Award under the banking and finance category — the only Web3 firm to receive such an award from Hong Kong authorities in 2024, the exchange announced on March 6.
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