Solana Network Speeds Up by 17% with Epoch 1037 Upgrade

Solana's network has become significantly faster after activating a reduction in its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds. This change, implemented on September 18, 2026, coincided with the start of epoch 1037 and brings block production to four slots per second.

The upgrade is part of SIMD-0525, a phased proposal that aims to tighten Solana's block cadence. The end goal is 200 milliseconds per slot, which has already been tested on devnet and testnet.

However, reducing block times does not directly translate to increased transaction throughput. To maintain network stability, Solana proportionally scaled down compute and data limits per slot alongside the timing change.