Solana Explores Faster Slots and Larger Transactions to Boost Performance
Solana is exploring significant network changes to boost performance and efficiency. Two engineering analyses published in mid-August examine cutting target slot time from 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds through staged steps, and introducing a larger transaction format that removes Address Lookup Tables.
The analysis on reducing slot time, tied to SIMD-0525, suggests that faster slots could reduce stale-price exposure in decentralized finance applications. However, the effect on sandwich activity remains unclear, depending on factors such as reaction latency, network contention, and user slippage settings.
At 200 milliseconds, validators would vote roughly twice as often per unit of wall-clock time, increasing overall voting activity while potentially making leader opportunities more frequent.
The second analysis examines the proposed Transaction V1 format with a 4,096-byte envelope that removes Address Lookup Tables in favor of inline address arrays. Around 62% of sampled v0 transactions referenced at least one ALT, and dense ALT transactions could add over 1,500 bytes in V1.