Highlights from Solana Community Validator Call - December 5, 2024

Chainflow -

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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