Solana reduces slot time to 350 milliseconds. This marks the first reduction since the network’s inception.
The Solana Foundation’s vice president of technology, Jacob Creech, confirmed the change. “We’re in a new era of 350ms,” Creech said in a Friday X post. “Next stop, 300ms.”
Why Solana reduces slot time
Average slot times now stand at 360ms at press time. This is down from the network’s original 400ms target. The Solana slot time explorer confirms this data.
In June, the Solana Foundation shared plans to reduce slot times further. The goal is to drop from 400ms to 200ms. This would improve latency and accelerate confirmations.
Three further 50ms reductions are planned. All four stages are targeted for mainnet activation. This will happen in Agave v4.2, a validator client developed by Anza. Nevertheless, the schedule remains tentative.
SIMD-0525 established the shorter slot times. The proposal was approved and merged on May 14.
