Solana Cuts Slot Time to 350ms in First Stage of Four-Stage Plan
Solana has initiated its four-stage plan to reduce slot times by reducing its target slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350ms for the first time since the network launched. The change, announced on August 21 by Solana Foundation vice president of technology Jacob Creech, is the first stage under the SIMD-0525 improvement proposal that introduces progressively shorter slot configurations at 300ms, 250ms, and 200ms.
The reduction in slot time aims to reduce confirmation latency while network resource limits are adjusted proportionally. Average slot times were running at around 360ms at the time of writing, according to Solana's slot time explorer, compared with the network's original 400ms target.
Solana plans to activate each reduction separately, giving validator operators and client developers a chance to test network behavior as block production becomes faster. The next stage would bring Solana to 300ms, reducing the nominal four-slot leader window from 1.4 seconds to 1.2 seconds and bringing an epoch down from roughly 42 hours to 36 hours.