Solana validators face the game of收益与效率: latency Block generation becomes a new strategy?

Recently, the Solana network has seen a notable trend: the median block time has significantly increased, resulting in a slower speed for the network to add new transactions to the blockchain. This phenomenon stems from certain validators adopting a new strategy of increasing revenue by delaying block generation.

In the past few years, Solana's code issues have gradually been resolved, and the block time once dropped to below the nominal 400 milliseconds. However, in the past month, the situation has changed. The median block time, as a key indicator of blockchain network performance, has suddenly surged.

Each Solana Block is managed by a validator that serves as the leader. The leader's task is to collect transactions, create Blocks, and broadcast them to the network. By creating Blocks, the leader can collect transaction fees. Therefore, some validators choose to extend latency in order to pack more transactions into the Block, maximizing their profits.

This behavior leads to an increase in the cycle length of Solana, which is contrary to the network's goal of pursuing high-speed processing. At the same time, the reduction in cycles also means a decrease in the compounding opportunities for staking rewards, which has caught the attention of industry insiders.

Solana provides a mechanism called "graceful tick" that allows leaders to successfully submit blocks within a certain latency period. This mechanism was originally intended to protect remote validators from unfair penalties, but it also allows validators to intentionally delay block submissions.

Recently, an alternative client for Solana has released a revenue-maximizing scheduler. Although the validators running this client appear to be packaging blocks at a slightly slower than normal speed, this latency is negligible compared to those with more severe latency.

Analysis indicates that those Solana validators with obvious latency in blocks usually run a modified version of a certain client. For example, in the 802nd cycle in mid-June, the median block time of some large validators exceeded 570 milliseconds, while the median block time of other validators was around 475 milliseconds.

Some validators have acknowledged that they previously employed a latency block strategy but have indicated that they have since ceased this practice. They emphasize that the incentive issue, which is the problem of reduced rewards due to the rapid generation of blocks, ultimately needs to be addressed at the protocol level.

However, the Solana validators community generally believes that slowing down the network speed is not appropriate, and slow validators are facing strong public opposition. Some large staking pool providers are considering taking measures, such as blacklisting slow validators or discussing how to address this issue through governance proposals.

At the same time, solutions at the protocol level are also being advanced. There are proposals suggesting to shorten the latency tick period of Solana, and the reform of the consensus mechanism proposed by Solana is expected to address this issue. Industry insiders expect that the new consensus mechanism may go live on the mainnet before the end of this year.

This event highlights the balancing dilemma between efficiency and profitability in blockchain networks, and reflects the complex game of interests among various parties in decentralized systems. As discussions deepen and solutions progress, the future development of the Solana network is worth paying attention to.