Solana's Faster Clock Speed Raises Concerns Over Vote Credit Distribution

The Solana network has seen its clock speed increase to 250ms without causing a significant jump in skipped slots, according to a study by the Solana Foundation. However, the analysis reveals that vote latency rose as the network moved through shorter slot targets, and validators with less stake lost a larger share of vote credits.

The study found that at 250ms, validators counted equally lost 1.6360% of vote credits, while when weighted by stake, the lost fraction was 0.0874%. This means that larger-staked validators, as a group, lost proportionally fewer credits than smaller operators.

The Solana Foundation's analysis is relevant to the proposed move to 200ms, which would bring about an economic question in addition to speed considerations. The study does not show that the 250ms change itself caused the disparity in vote credit losses.