Fidelity Says Solana Network Is Resilient, but Some Risks Need Watching

A report from Fidelity’s Center for Applied Technology says Solana has made major progress in network health across resilience, economic security and performance. The network has had no reported mainnet outages in two years. The report warns, though, that concentrations in stake, hosting and client software could put that record at risk and should be monitored.

Solana Economic Security and Performance

According to the report, economic security is backed by heavy staking participation and incentives that reward validator performance. Low latency, higher capacity and cheap transactions also help the network work at scale. Even so, several decentralization and resilience issues need continued attention, including stake sitting with a small number of validator identities and operators.

Solana Slot Time Reduction

Solana cut its slot time to 350 milliseconds on Aug. 21, the first reduction since the network launched, according to Jacob Creech, the Solana Foundation’s vice president of technology. In June, the Foundation shared plans to bring slot times down to 200ms, saying this would improve latency and speed up confirmations. Three more 50ms cuts are planned.