Solana reduced its target block confirmation time from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds. The change took effect at the start of epoch 1020 on August 21, after a feature gate activated at slot 440,208,000 in epoch 1019.

Slots are the intervals during which validators produce blocks, and epochs consist of 432,000 slots. A one‑epoch delay required by SIMD‑0525 allowed validators to apply the new timing together with adjusted shred limits.

Trillium, a validator telemetry provider, recorded a slot‑weighted mean of 365.4 milliseconds across 431,505 slots in epoch 1021, down from 420.7 milliseconds in epoch 1015. The post‑change epoch also showed 331 skipped slots, or 0.077% of total slots, compared with 1,890 skips and 0.438% in the prior epoch.

The shorter slot window reduces the leader period from 1.6 seconds at 400 milliseconds to 1.4 seconds at 350 milliseconds, while keeping four slots per leader. Compute, account‑write, vote, data and shred limits scale with the reduced target, allowing blocks to arrive more frequently without changing overall work capacity per second.

Anza CEO Brennan Watt said the adjustment was intended to become effective at epoch 1024, around August 28. Solana’s roadmap plans further reductions to 300 milliseconds, 250 milliseconds and eventually 200 milliseconds, with each stage subject to a one‑epoch pause if skipped‑block rates rise.

The upgrade offers an early stability signal but does not yet confirm causation between the timing cut and the observed improvements.