Solana activated 200-millisecond slots on its mainnet on October 9, doubling its block production frequency from 2.5 to 5 blocks per second, down from the original 400 ms target. The SIMD-0525 upgrade also reduces the duration of a network epoch from approximately 48 hours to 24 hours and shortens the blockhash expiration window from 60 to 30 seconds. Transaction processing capacity per second remains unchanged because the computational budget within each slot was proportionally reduced. Initial data shows an average of approximately 222 milliseconds across 1,413 slots, with the new 200 ms target not yet consistently reached. Attention now shifts to Alpenglow, the next upgrade aimed at reducing transaction finality to 150 milliseconds, compared with roughly 12.8 seconds currently, with no confirmed mainnet launch date.
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