SOL news: Solana is about to halve its block times as final 200-millisecond upgrade nears

Solana is preparing to cut the time between blocks to 200 milliseconds on Friday, completing a series of upgrades that has halved the network’s target block production time since August.

The final reduction, from 250 milliseconds, is scheduled to take effect at epoch 1053, expected around 15:00 UTC, according to Anza, the developer of Solana’s widely used Agave validator software.

The change would allow the blockchain to target five block-production opportunities every second, compared with 2.5 under the original 400-millisecond configuration.

A slot is the short window in which a designated validator can add transactions to the blockchain. Shorter slots mean trading applications, wallets and exchanges can receive updated information more frequently, reducing the time a submitted transaction may spend waiting to be processed.

The changes began Aug. 21, when Solana moved to 350 milliseconds, followed by reductions to 300 milliseconds on Aug. 28 and 250 milliseconds on Sept. 18.

The technical proposal, known as SIMD-0525, also limits how much computing work validators can pack into each block.