Coinbase Blames Sluggish Solana Withdrawals on ‘Blockchain Issues’

Since its inception, the Solana has been celebrated for its scalability. Solana is widely considered the fastest and most performant blockchain in the crypto industry.

Despite Solana’s reputation for sub-second transactions, the Coinbase crypto exchange has drawn criticism for pinning slow $SOL withdrawals on “blockchain issues”.

Is there any evidence to support Coinbase’s stance, or could the popular exchange have an ulterior motive?

Why Are Coinbase Solana Withdrawals Slow?

Coinbase, one of the most popular centralized exchanges in the crypto industry, has come under fire from the Solana community. 

According to Bangerz, a popular influencer, Coinbase has been informing its customers that withdrawals to the Solana blockchain have an estimated completion time of ~45 minutes. This estimation drew widespread criticism from the Solana faithful, who accused the exchange of “pushing a narrative” to discredit the chain.

The official Coinbase 𝕏 account acknowledged that Solana transactions were experiencing delays. Responding to users’ concerns, the account explained these delays could be due to “wallet maintenance or blockchain issues”.

Adding further fuel to the fire, a disgruntled Coinbase customer shared screenshots from a conversation with a Coinbase Customer Service representative. ‘Jason’ from Coinbase became Solana’s public enemy number one, after proclaiming “SOL is slow on its own”.

Fortunately for Coinbase and its frustrated customers, the team was able to tear themselves away from their Thanksgiving meals to deploy a fix. 

According to Andrew, Coinbase Protocol Specialist, the exchange was suffering from “indexer issues” which impacted Solana transactions and caused UI bugs.

Solana Foundation Head of Strategy Austin Federa chimed in on the debacle. While sympathizing with the employees who spent their Thanksgiving responding to frustrated users, Federa criticized Coinbase’s communications surrounding the indexer issues.

Technical Difficulties or Deliberate Mis-Service?

While Coinbase was able to react relatively quickly and deploy a fix, the event fuelled conspirational theories that the exchange was deliberately downplaying Solana's performance.

Social media commentators argue that Coinbase is subtly trying to discredit rival blockchains in an attempt to drive adoption to Base, the exchange’s dedicated Ethereum Layer-2. 

Outside the Ethereum Layer-1, Base has proven itself one of Solana’s fiercest competitors in recent months, witnessing high inflows and capital and DEX trading volume. 

Competition is a healthy and vital dynamic in the crypto industry. Rivalries between networks don’t necessarily need to be antagonistic. Instead, facilitating smooth integrations between chains and ecosystems will help to expand the industry as a whole. 

Wallet software is an excellent example of this, with OG Solana teams Phantom recently integrating Base into their product.

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