A few days ago, we gathered for our monthly community-led Solana validator call. What made this one special was the fact that we celebrated the 2-year anniversary of initiating these calls. Hundreds of people tune in every month for a friendly discussion of hot topics, execution client updates, governance conversations and much more.
We started out with modest agendas and saw them growing bigger and deeper. We analyzed outages and technical issues, talked about slashing, root cause analysis, validator key management, network upgrades, community projects, base fees, TVCs, congestion control, MEV, performance metrics and so much more.
The community explored collaborations and debated governance proposals.
These calls were the birthplace of the BlockZero event - a validator summit that happened twice already (during Breakpoint 2023 and Breakpoint 2024) with a third edition already in the works for 2025.
The Solana community validator calls have become a staple, and we are proud to be their host, supporting the great work this community is doing, securing the fastest growing blockchain.
If you are curious to see the history of these past 2 years, scroll down the memory lane here, and why not join us for the next one?
The calls are open to anyone who wishes to attend - validators, delegators, crypto enthusiasts - anyone is welcome. They happen every 4th Thursday of the month, and we always share the link to join on our Twitter account.
And now, the notes from the last call.
Highlights from Solana's Community Led Validator Call - March 2025
Performance and Metrics Update
Validators discussed improvements driven mainly by TVC, significantly reducing skip rates and vote latency across the network. The result is fewer poorly performing validators and more high-performance ones. Metrics now show exceptional performance globally, largely due to optimized software v2.1 and strategic geographic staking decisions. Specifically:
- Vote latency has notably improved, with most validators consistently achieving vote latencies within one slot.
- Validators emphasized the ongoing importance of vote speed as a primary factor influencing network efficiency, acknowledging some validators might have an advantage due to proximity to popular block engines like JITO.
Geographic Centralization Concerns
Concerns were raised regarding validator centralization, particularly in Europe (Netherlands and Germany), which hosts the majority of top-performing validators. While geographic latency differences remain impactful, some expressed worries that incentives are disproportionately rewarding validators in these locations, causing centralization. Solutions discussed included:
- Potentially revising how geographic locations are weighted in validator pools.
- Creating incentives for validators to diversify geographically, ensuring better global user experience.
- The ongoing debate about the significance of geography, given validators' flexibility to relocate quickly.
Double Zero Project Update
The Double Zero team provided a comprehensive update:
- They unveiled a robust global fiber network increasing validator connectivity and resilience, covering major regions including the U.S., Europe, Japan, and plans to expand into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America.
- Introduced upcoming multi-homing capabilities enabling smooth IP address switching without validator downtime.
- Announced a private validator-only Coinlist token sale launching April 2, open to U.S. accredited investors (tokens locked for a year) and fully unlocked internationally at mainnet launch.
- The sale intends to foster genuine price discovery and validator ownership, with minimum and maximum ticket sizes scaled to validator performance and stake.
Snapshot Distribution and Infrastructure
Validators discussed snapshot accessibility as a major operational hurdle. Pipe Network presented its snapshot CDN solution, offering snapshots broadly with no commercial intent, primarily to load-test infrastructure. There was broad consensus on forming a decentralized coalition to make snapshots widely available, including:
- Collaboration among validators to share common infrastructure.
- Working towards trust solutions as a later phase once foundational infrastructure is widely adopted.
Remote Signing and Validator Security
Technical limitations regarding remote signing (e.g., using off-the-shelf hardware like YubiHSM2) were discussed, concluding that remote signing isn't practical given Solana's real-time signing needs. Validators recommended proximity-based software solutions for signing instead.
Firedancer Project Briefing
The Firedancer team announced the upcoming mainnet readiness of its 0.4 branch, ensuring better validator rewards, minor bug fixes, and stable mainnet compatibility. They encouraged validators to test and report feedback to further improve the release.
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