Solana has reduced the target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds. On-chain data indicates that this adjustment took effect on Friday. As a result, the frequency of network updates has increased, and wallets, exchanges, and trading applications will now be able to obtain on-chain status more quickly.
The number increases to 4 per second slot.
In the Solana network, slot represents the short time window within which designated validators can write to the blocks. After the adjustment, the network's target is now 4 slot per second, which is higher than the previous rate of about 3.3 per second. This means that the data on the chain seen by applications will be more up-to-date.
Verifiers will still continue to serve as leaders for 4 consecutive slot periods, therefore the single control window time will be reduced from 1.2 seconds to 1 second. The right to trade sorting will also be transferred to the next verifier more quickly.
The overall processing capacity remains essentially unchanged.
This speed increase does not mean that the total throughput of Solana will increase accordingly. According to SIMD-0525, after the time of slot is shortened, the amount of computation and data that each slot is allowed to handle will also be reduced in the same proportion.
In other words, although there may be more slots per unit of time, each slot can handle less work, so the overall processing capacity calculated based on actual time remains roughly the same.
Epoch shortened to approximately 30 hours
This adjustment is the third phase of Solana's reduction of the time frame for slot. Previously, the network latency had been reduced from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds, then to 300 milliseconds, and now it has been further reduced to 250 milliseconds.
Since each epoch is still fixed at 432,000 slot, its duration will be reduced from about 36 hours to about 30 hours. At the same time, the rate at which block hashes become invalid in real time will also increase, and the available time for processes such as offline signing and delayed approval will be shortened.
Infrastructure service providers also need to receive and store more individual blocks. For applications that directly convert the slot number into a fixed duration, if the parameters are not updated, there may also be discrepancies in time estimation.
There is no date for the 200-millisecond solution yet.
Developers have also proposed to further reduce the target slot time to 200 milliseconds. If implemented, the network will be able to handle 5 slot per second, and the epoch will also be shortened to about 24 hours, but the mainnet launch time for this phase has not yet been announced.
