Solana validators face a trade-off between efficiency and yield

Recently, there has been a striking trend in the Solana network: the median block time has significantly increased, leading to a slowdown in the network's transaction processing speed. Behind this phenomenon are new strategies adopted by certain validators, who believe that delaying block generation may yield higher returns.

In the Solana network, each block is led by a validator who is responsible for it. The leader's duties include collecting transactions, creating blocks, and broadcasting them to the network. Through this process, the leader can earn transaction fees as a reward. Some validators have found that by extending the wait time, they can package more transactions into a block, thereby maximizing their earnings.

This approach has led to an increase in the cycle length of Solana, which is contrary to the high processing capabilities that the network has always pursued. Furthermore, a reduction in cycles also means fewer compounding opportunities for staking rewards, which has drawn the attention of industry experts.

The Solana network has a "grace tick" mechanism that allows leaders to successfully submit blocks within a certain delay period. Although this mechanism is intended to protect remote validators from unfair penalties, it inadvertently provides the possibility for validators to intentionally delay block submissions.

Recently, upgrades to some validators' clients seem to have intensified this trend. For example, a certain alternative client recently released a revenue-maximizing scheduler, which, although it has relatively low latency, has still sparked discussions within the industry.

Data shows that during the 802nd cycle in mid-June, the median block time of certain large validators was significantly higher than the network average, exceeding 570 milliseconds. Some validators with undisclosed identities also exhibited similar latency behavior.

However, this practice is not popular in the Solana validators community. Several major staking pool providers are considering measures that may blacklist validators with severe delays or remove them from the delegation pool.

At the same time, solutions at the protocol layer are also being actively promoted. Proposals suggest shortening the grace tick period for Solana, and the planned reform of the consensus mechanism for Solana is also expected to fundamentally address this issue.

Insiders expect the new consensus mechanism to go live on the mainnet by the end of this year, which will bring significant performance improvements to the Solana network and help balance the conflict between efficiency and profit.