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Solana cuts mainnet slot time to 200 milliseconds

Solana completed its move to 200ms slots on Oct. 9, doubling block production opportunities while Alpenglow remains a separate consensus upgrade in development.

Crypto Bulletin Newsroom 2 min read

Solana cuts mainnet slot time to 200 milliseconds

Solana completed its mainnet reduction to 200-millisecond slots on Oct. 9, doubling the network’s target block production rate to five opportunities per second, according to the Solana Foundation’s upgrade page. The final step took effect at the start of epoch 1053, at about 14:35 UTC.

The change halves the target slot time from 400 milliseconds. Solana rolled it out in four stages: 350 milliseconds on Aug. 21, 300 milliseconds on Aug. 28, 250 milliseconds on Sept. 18 and 200 milliseconds on Oct. 9, the Foundation said.

How does a shorter slot change block production?

A slot is the window in which a designated validator can add transactions to the chain. With 200-millisecond slots, Solana targets five block-production opportunities each second, up from 2.5 at 400 milliseconds, CoinDesk reported.

The faster schedule does not increase the network’s theoretical processing capacity by itself. Under the SIMD-0525 proposal, each block’s compute limit falls to 30 million units from 37.5 million at 250-millisecond slots, keeping the total capacity roughly unchanged, CoinDesk reported.

The Foundation says shorter slots can speed transaction confirmations and reduce the time a leader controls block building. The blockhash validity window also falls from 60 seconds to 30 seconds because it remains 150 blocks long.

Is Alpenglow part of the 200ms change?

No. Solana describes Alpenglow as a separate consensus upgrade that changes how validators agree on transaction order and finality; the Foundation’s page lists it as in development, with testnet and devnet active and mainnet not activated.

Alpenglow targets roughly 150-millisecond finality, down from about 12.8 seconds under the current system, according to the Solana Foundation’s Alpenglow overview. The Foundation says slot times were reduced separately, from 400 to 200 milliseconds, in four stages completed in October.

Sources