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Solana activates 350-millisecond slot timing on mainnet

Solana says the staged plan will eventually move toward 200-millisecond slots, with later reductions gated if block skip rates rise.

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Solana has activated a mainnet feature that cuts its target slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds, marking the network’s first slot-time reduction since it launched. The change is designed to shorten the window for block production leaders to finish blocks and to support faster transaction confirmations.

According to The Defiant, the SIMD-0525 feature is listed as active on Mainnet Beta at slot 440,208,000 in epoch 1019. Solana plans a staged transition rather than an immediate move to its end target, with additional 50-millisecond reductions rolled out through separate feature gates in later epochs.

The network’s approved sequence moves from 400 milliseconds to 350, then 300, 250, and finally 200 milliseconds. Solana says it will not advance to the next reduction if block skip rates are too high, and it labels the overall upgrade as a breaking change, with required indexing changes still to be determined.

Solana also said the validator-client improvements behind the plan are tied to Turbine and Replay, while the upgrade does not change the number of ticks per slot, the four-slot leader span, or the number of slots in an epoch. Because slots arrive more quickly, validators cycle through epochs in less elapsed time, and the documentation has not yet been fully updated to reflect the initial 350-millisecond step.

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