Solana Slashes Slot Time to 350ms Amid Plan for Quadrupled Throughput
Solana's mainnet slot time has been reduced to 350 milliseconds, marking the first such change since its launch. The network aims to reach a target of 200 milliseconds through four planned 50-millisecond steps.
The reduction took effect at epoch 1020 and was implemented by Anza, the research firm behind the Agave validator client, as part of its v4.2 release. This update carries several other protocol changes, including trimming per-slot work limits at every step to prevent validators from processing more compute in a given second than they handle today.
Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza, confirmed that testnet slot times have already reached 182 milliseconds, with explorer data showing an average of 193 milliseconds over the preceding hour. Reducing slot times on testnets has occurred roughly every two epochs.
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, predicts that shorter slots paired with a higher block limit will quadruple network throughput in the near term. This change is expected to be particularly significant for validators, who now face tighter timing margins due to their reduced window for holding four consecutive slots, narrowing from 1.6 seconds to 1.4 seconds.