Why Validator Performance Goes Beyond Uptime
Most Solana stakers assume “validator performance” means uptime and minimizing skipped slots. While uptime matters, Solana’s unique architecture makes block production speed equally critical to your staking rewards, network health, and the user experience across the entire ecosystem.
On Solana, consistent block production matters (~400 milliseconds). When validators intentionally delay block production—even by 100-200 milliseconds—the effects cascade through the network. Slow blocks:
- Reduce network throughput
- Degrade user experience by increasing transaction inclusion times and confirmation times
- Ultimately diminish rewards for protocol-aligned delegators and validators who prioritize network health over short-term profit maximization.
Industry leaders are taking notice. The Solana Foundation reiterates Alpenglow’s consensus update (Alpenglow) excludes slow and underperforming validators from block production, while monitoring platforms like Solana Compass now penalize validators with consistently slow block times. This shift represents a fundamental change in how validator quality is measured and rewarded.
Understanding Solana Block Times
Per Anza, Solana target block times are every ~400 milliseconds. This target enables the network’s industry-leading throughput, but it also means that even small delays compound quickly across the system.
Here’s how the cascade effect works when validators are slow:
- Slower transaction throughput for the entire chain, as epochs extend beyond their expected duration
- Missed reward opportunities for the next validator in the Leader Schedule, who receives a delayed or stale block to build upon
- Increased MEV manipulation risk as timing delays between blocks creates drifting prices on exchanges, arbitrages and toxic flow opportunities for extractive actors
- Degraded user experience as transaction confirmation and finality slow across applications
What Makes a “Slowpoke” Validator?
Recent monitoring reveals troubling patterns. During Epoch 814, some major validators recorded average block times far exceeding the 400ms target—in some cases reaching over 800ms. Community-built tools like those found at slowpoke.art3mis.cloud have emerged to track these performance issues, providing transparency around which validators are consistently underperforming.
A validator consistently producing blocks above 420ms is now considered problematic by network monitoring platforms. More concerning: validators exceeding 580ms are operating at speeds over 50% slower than optimal, creating measurable network degradation for all users.
The Problem: Some Validators Are Gaming the System
Recent research and community monitoring tools reveal that certain operators are intentionally delaying block production to create and capture additional MEV, or manipulate reward calculations. These timing games manifest in several harmful ways:
- Network-wide latency increases as delayed blocks propagate through the consensus system
- Reduced rewards for honest validators who prioritize consistent, timely block production
- Compromised user experience during high-activity periods, with one epoch running nearly an hour longer than expected due to slow validators
- Increased centralization pressure as only well-resourced operators can consistently exploit timing advantages
The scope of this problem is significant. Squeezing MEV rewards is a key driver for validators engaging in this toxic network behaviour, in other words validators are wasting substantial processing time on activities that provide no network value while degrading performance for legitimate users.
Recent analysis by Ghost shows that the failed transactions consume a disproportionate share of network Compute Units (CUs) relative to the fees they generate. Arbitrage bots and MEV are a key factor: their failed transactions make up ~40% of all CUs used but only ~7% of total fees paid.
The Solana Foundation has responded with Timely Vote Credits (TVC) to address voting latency exploits, implemented in November 2024, which directly rewards validators for submitting votes quickly and consistently. However, this only addresses consensus and inflation rewards, not block production rewards. So certain validators continue exploiting timing loopholes despite these protocol-level incentives.
This behavior has reached sufficient scale that community members and protocols have taken public action. For instance, the Jito Foundation’s JIP-23 proposal published on July 18 2025 establishes mechanisms to exclude “lagging leaders” from their stake pool, penalizing validators who consistently exceed average block times and deviate from Solana’s latency goals. As shown in community data, some validators have reached nearly 1-second latencies, materially lowering network health and user experience.
Figment’s Approach: Network-First Infrastructure Discipline
Figment prioritizes consistency, fairness, and network health through superior infrastructure and operational discipline, and we do not currently engage in timing games on Solana:
https://solanacompass.com/statistics/block-times
Performance Metrics That Matter
Our commitment to network-aligned performance shows in the data:
| Quarter | Figment SRR | Network Average | Performance Advantage vs. Network Average | Voting Effectiveness | Skip Rate |
| Q2 2025 | 7.45% | 6.70% | +11.2% | 99.84% | 0.15% |
| Q1 2025 | 8.91% | 6.92% | +28.8% | 99.7% | 0.33% |
These results demonstrate that network-aligned infrastructure discipline generates superior returns compared to exploitative tactics that harm overall network health. Our validators’ block time has been 5% lower than the medium cluster block time for the last 25 epochs, sitting at ~357ms.
Figment validators have one of the lowest sandwich rates for the last 30 days, sitting at ranks 346 and 475 for their public validators based on the Ghost data in epoch 822, further demonstrating alignment with the Solana network health.
Technical Infrastructure Excellence
Operating high-performance Solana validators requires:
- Bare metal infrastructure with custom latency tuning optimized for sub-400ms block production
- Dedicated performance monitoring for slot times, voting latency (consistently below 1.2 slots), and MEV impact across all network conditions
- Transparent, data-backed reporting that demonstrates consistent block production within optimal parameters
Figment actively participates in Solana devnet/testnet upgrades and early adoption of protocol improvements like Jito BAM and the upcoming Alpenglow consensus upgrade. This proactive approach ensures our validators are optimized for both current performance and future network evolution.
How Alpenglow Will Shift the Playing Field
The upcoming Alpenglow upgrade represents Solana’s most significant consensus protocol transformation to date. This comprehensive overhaul fundamentally changes the economics of validator operations while dramatically improving network performance.
| Metric | Protocol Target | What It Measures | Why It Matters |
| Slot Duration | 400 ms | Time window assigned to a leader | Determines max theoretical TPS and defines “on-time” voting |
| Block Production Latency | <380 ms | How quickly a leader transmits a fully built block | Direct driver of skip-rate and downstream leader efficiency |
| Voting Latency | ≤2 slots (<800 ms) | Time between block landing and vote arrival | Validators earn full inflation only if within 2 slots |
| Finality | 12.8 s (TowerBFT) → 100–150 ms (Alpenglow) | Irreversibility horizon | Critical for institutional settlement requirements |
Revolutionary Performance Improvements
Alpenglow’s technical specifications promise transformative changes:
- Block finality reduced from 12.8 seconds to 100-150 milliseconds
- Validator operating costs slashed annually through elimination of on-chain voting fees
- Off-chain BLS vote certificates replacing hundreds of individual vote transactions per second
Why Timing Games Will Become Obsolete
Alpenglow’s Votor consensus protocol eliminates the timing advantages that some validators currently exploit:
- Dual-path finality: 80% stake participation achieves single-round finality; 60% participation requires two rounds
- Stake-weighted relay system through Rotor removes multi-hop propagation delays
- Fixed 400ms slots eliminate the variable timing windows that enable current manipulation strategies
Validators engaging in timing games today will be at a significant disadvantage under Alpenglow, while operators like Figment who have invested in legitimate infrastructure optimization will thrive in the new performance-focused environment.
How to Choose the Right Validator Provider
When evaluating validators for your Solana staking—whether directly or through liquid staking protocols—prioritize performance metrics beyond simple uptime and commission rates:
Essential Evaluation Criteria
- Block time consistency: Seek validators maintaining median block times below 420ms
- Skip rate performance: Lower skip rates (under 0.5%) indicate superior infrastructure preparation
- Voting effectiveness: Consistent performance above 99% demonstrates reliable consensus participation
- Transparent reporting: Validators should provide clear performance data, including SRR breakdowns and latency metrics
Questions for Liquid Staking Protocols
If using protocols like Marinade or Jito, ask critical questions about their validator selection to ensure alignment with network health:
- How do you monitor and exclude validators engaging in timing manipulation or lagging leader behavior, as addressed in initiatives like JIP-23?
- What specific performance criteria beyond uptime do you use, such as block time thresholds or sandwich attack rates?
- How frequently do you rebalance stake away from underperforming validators, and what metrics (e.g., average block times exceeding 420ms) trigger removal?
- Do you incorporate public ranking tools like slowpoke.art3mis.cloud or Timely Vote Credits in your selection process?
- Does a validator within your delegation program censor consensus votes from other validators? Thanks to art3mis_cloud for building a vote inclusion analyzer, a tool to check if a leader validator is excluding votes from other validators.
- A leader censoring votes from other validators lowers the affected validator’s Timely Vote Credits and inflation rewards. Vote censoring also affects the excluded validators eligibility score within a decentralized delegation program, as hitting certain thresholds of Timely Vote Credits and epoch credits relative to the network are a key criteria for delegation eligibility.
Recent developments strengthen these protocols’ approaches: Jito’s JIP-23 proposal enables 25-epoch exclusions for slow validators, while Marinade has implemented systems to penalize validators with high sandwich rates, rebalancing stake to maintain network efficiency. However, effectiveness varies—ask for reports on their validator pools to verify focus on speed and fairness.
For institutional-grade options that prioritize these metrics, explore Figment’s Solana staking services.
Speed is Security, Speed is Rewards
Fast, honest block production is the foundation of Solana’s vision as a real-time blockchain capable of supporting everything from high-frequency trading to instant payments. As the network evolves with upgrades like Alpenglow, validator performance standards are becoming increasingly stringent.
The validators you choose—whether directly or through liquid staking protocols—directly impact not just your personal rewards but the health and performance of the entire Solana ecosystem. Recent industry developments make clear that the era of tolerating slow, exploitative validators is ending.
Looking Forward
Community tools and foundation policies are creating increasing pressure for validator accountability.
Figment remains committed to performance transparency, infrastructure excellence, and long-term network alignment. Our proactive preparation for Jito BAM, Alpenglow, combined with our proven track record of superior staking reward rates, positions our delegators to benefit from Solana’s continued evolution toward real-time blockchain performance.
As consensus upgrades reshape validator economics and community standards rise, the choice is clear: stake with validators who prioritize network health alongside competitive rewards—because on Solana, speed truly is security.
Ready to stake with a validator committed to Solana’s long-term success? Learn more about Figment’s institutional-grade Solana staking services.
