Solana to reduce mainnet slot time to 350ms

Solana is implementing a major mainnet upgrade to reduce its target slot time from approximately 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds. This change is scheduled to officially take effect starting from Epoch 1020. The upgrade aims to increase block production frequency and lower transaction confirmation latency, benefiting high-frequency trading and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

To prevent network overload during this speed boost, the network is adjusting per-block compute limits. As slot times decrease, the maximum compute units allowed per block will also be reduced to maintain a consistent theoretical maximum of approximately 250 million compute units per second. For example, at a 350ms target, the maximum block limit will be 87.5 million compute units.

Anza CEO Brennan Watt noted that the rollout includes a delayed activation mechanism to ensure stability. Developers are advised to update SDK constants to avoid service disruptions. Long-term, the team plans to move network parameters on-chain, allowing clients to query parameters directly without requiring manual version updates.