TLDR Solana cut its block time from 0.42 seconds to 0.21 seconds in four steps between Aug. 21 and Oct. 9. The network had no halts in the 361 days checked, and skipped blocks fell from 0.23%
Solana now produces a block about every 0.21 seconds, half the 0.42 seconds it took in early August. The change rolled out in four steps over seven weeks, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Bitquery.
The network did not stop once during the 361 days Bitquery checked. But data on memecoin trading shows that the fastest bots did not lose any speed.
The change came through a formal proposal called SIMD-0525. Validators, the computers that run Solana, switched it on in four steps that moved the slot target from 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds.
The steps began on Aug. 21, Aug. 28, Sept. 18 and Oct. 9. Developers could pause between steps if too many blocks went missing.
The Solana Foundation said the goals were shorter waits for users and less time for any single validator to control which transactions get into a block.
Solana now makes about 407,000 blocks per day, up from 206,000. Each block holds less, about 95 swaps compared with 149 before, so the network handles about the same amount of work per second.
Skipped blocks, where a validator produces nothing during its turn, fell from 0.23% of slots to 0.05%. The longest gap between two blocks was under 5 seconds.
A typical swap by an ordinary wallet still paid about a tenth of a cent in network fees. The average fee fell from 2.7 cents in November to about 1 cent in October.
Stakers now receive rewards every 26 hours instead of every 51 hours. The yearly reward rate stayed the same.
Bitquery also tracked sniping on Pump.fun, the site where most new Solana memecoins launch. Sniping means racing to buy a token in its first moments.
The share of new coins bought by an outside wallet in their first block fell from 42% to 32%. But the first block also got shorter, lasting about 0.27 seconds in the later sample compared with 0.42 seconds before.
Measured over roughly 1.3 seconds, the share barely moved. About 53% of new coins received an outside buy in that window before the change, compared with 52% after.
An outside wallet means any wallet other than the coin’s first buyer. Bitquery said the measure does not prove every early buyer was a bot.
Sandwich attacks also continued. In a sandwich, a bot buys just before another trader’s swap and sells right after at the higher price that swap created.
Bitquery counted about 30 sandwich patterns per 10,000 swaps in early August. The rate dropped to 21 in early September, then rose to 33 between Sept. 19 and Oct. 7.
Both bot comparisons end Oct. 7, so they do not cover the final step to 200 milliseconds on Oct. 9.
The public Solana node measured actual slot times of 212 milliseconds between Oct. 22 and Oct. 25. Bitquery’s figures were verified on Oct. 26, with Solana trading near $99.54, down about 20% over 30 days.
The post Solana Cuts Block Time to 0.21 Seconds With No Network Outage appeared first on Blockonomi.
