On December 5, we had our last community-organized Solana Validator Call of the year. Here are the notes of everything we discussed.
FireDancer Development Update
- The FireDancer team reported significant progress:
- Full implementation of the runtime is close to matching the Agave runtime. The team emphasized a rigorous fuzzing infrastructure to identify and resolve potential bugs that could cause chain divergence.
- Work is now shifting toward integrating the virtual machine into the broader system. This includes fetching blocks, replaying them in the replay stage, and managing consensus.
- The team expects a competitive validator version to be ready in the coming months, with significant improvements in conformance and usability.
Slashing Proposal Overview
- A slashing mechanism was proposed to penalize validators for two main offenses:
- When a leader produces two different blocks in the same slot, causing network instability.
- Future plans include addressing voting-related issues that harm consensus.
- The total slashable stake is calculated based on the Nakamoto coefficient (currently ~4.5 million SOL).
- Smaller validators may not face penalties for isolated mistakes, but large or coordinated operators can be collectively slashed.
- Slashing includes deducting stake principal, not just rewards, to prevent malicious attacks.
- The proposal creates incentives for Sybil attacks, where operators split into smaller nodes to avoid penalties.
- Validators raised concerns about the timing of proof submissions, as slashing events occurring late in an epoch could allow validators to avoid punishment.
- Discussions highlighted potential adjustments to epoch lengths or unstaking periods to ensure fair slashing enforcement.
Governance Participation Slashing
- Evan introduced the idea of slashing validators for non-participation in governance votes.
- Missing votes, regardless of a “Yes,” “No,” or “Abstain,” could be slashable.
- The goal is to improve governance participation, which has been historically low (e.g., ~51% participation in key votes).
- Challenges and Feedback:
- Validators, especially large institutional ones, may face legal risks for participating in votes.
- Stakeholders require clarity to differentiate slashing for malicious activities versus downtime or errors.
- Validators suggested rewarding participation rather than penalizing abstention to avoid discouraging smaller operators.
Project Double Zero Announcement
- A new networking project, Double Zero, aims to improve Solana’s blockchain performance by re-engineering internet connectivity for high-performance, decentralized networks.
- Currently running four validators with plans to scale to 15 nodes by January 2025.
- Integration with Jito block engines is planned.
- The community is encouraged to review the Double Zero whitepaper and engage in the upcoming Q&A session in January 2025.
Performance Metrics Discussion
- John introduced the Trillium Dashboards, which provide insights into validator performance, rewards, and skip slot data.
- Most skips occur at the first or all four slots. Patterns suggest network latency issues, particularly influenced by data center speed.
- Comparisons by city, country, and ASN show that network infrastructure impacts vote performance.
- Validators can use Trillium’s APIs to analyze rewards, vote credits, and latency data (Documentation).
- The community was encouraged to explore the dashboards and provide feedback.
Closing Notes
- The discussion on slashing mechanisms and governance participation will continue into 2025, with community input encouraged via GitHub discussions.
- The next community call will feature a more in-depth discussion on validator performance pools and key performance metrics.
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