Solana Goes to 350 Milliseconds and Crypto Market Loves it

A slot is a tiny window where a validator produces a block. On Friday, Solana shortened it from 400 milliseconds to 350. Nothing spectacular at first glance, except when it happens exactly as the market looks at SOL with interest it hasn’t had for months.

In Brief

From 400 to 350 Milliseconds: First Stage of a Four-Step Plan for Solana

The mainnet update carried out Friday morning on Solana reduces the target slot time to 350 milliseconds from 400 before. This figure corresponds to the brief period during which a designated validator produces a crypto transaction block. The change is thus part of SIMD-0525, an improvement proposal that charts a course toward an ultimate goal of 200 milliseconds on SOL, which is half the network’s historical time.

However, faster transaction confirmations for crypto users are not a throughput boost. The Solana network does not process more work per second, but simply slices the time differently: