Solana validators accelerate network transactions through the "Timely Voting Points" mechanism

PANews reported on April 10th that, according to Cointelegraph, Solana validators have voted in favor of a proposal aimed at reducing consensus voting latency, which could speed up transaction speeds on the blockchain. The proposal calls for the implementation of a "timely voting points" mechanism on Solana and was passed with 98% approval votes on April 9th. It will change the incentive method for validators to "vote" - voting is a key part of Solana's consensus mechanism for confirming transactions.

According to Solana Labs, so far, every time a validator submits a consensus vote on an ultimately determined block in the network, they receive one fixed vote point. Over time, validators found that they can maximize their profits by delaying their votes to ensure they are casted correctly without any penalties. This proposal was put forward by Shinobi Systems' "zantetsu", one of Solana's validators, on March 14th and it will implement variable number of vote points awarding more points to those who delay less in casting their votes. As explained by Solana Labs: “This would prevent intentional 'lagging', as delayed voting would reduce the points earned from each vote."

The impact of this new mechanism is still unknown as it is expected to be implemented sometime after this month’s upgrade (Solana v1.18), which includes patches fixing priority fees and network congestion issues within the chain itself. If no other issues arise during testing phase then bug fixes (involving QUIC reconfiguration) are now scheduled for April 15th.