Chapter · Master Solana
Congestion and priority fees
Even without a full outage, Solana can get busy. When a hot token launches, thousands of people and bots send transactions at the same time. To get ahead of the crowd, you can attach a priority fee, a small extra tip that pushes your transaction up the queue. Without it, your transaction might be dropped and you have to try again.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What this lesson covers
A practical habit
Most wallets set a sensible priority fee for you, and in calm times it costs almost nothing. When you see a busy launch or a laggy app, a slightly higher priority fee is often the fix. The takeaway is simple. Solana is cheap, but during frenzies you may pay a bit more to get through, and that is normal, not a bug.
What you get asked
What is a priority fee on Solana?
A priority fee is an optional tip on top of the base fee. During congestion it helps your transaction get picked sooner instead of being left behind.
When the network is congested, adding a ___ fee helps your transaction get picked ahead of others.
The priority fee is the lever users pull during busy moments. It signals that you value fast inclusion and are willing to tip a little more.
Why can one very popular app cause less trouble than it used to?
Solana added more local fee markets, so demand for one hot account raises fees there without freezing the rest of the network the same way.
What can happen if you send a transaction during heavy congestion with no priority fee?
In a crowded moment, low-tip transactions can be dropped rather than confirmed. You then need to resend, ideally with a priority fee attached.
The rest of this chapter
A plain-English deep dive into how Solana reaches high speed and low fees, plus the real risks around outages and memecoins.