Solana releases network performance report: multiple new features launched, TPS surges, network runs smoothly

Original Title: Network Performance Report: July 2023

Author: Solana Foundation

Compiled by: Loopy Lu, OdailyNews

Recently, the Solana Foundation released the "Solana Network Performance Report." This report reveals a series of metrics regarding the network status of Solana and reviews the operational status, performance parameters, energy usage, and more of the Solana network over the past six months.

In October 2022, Solana released its previous report and solicited feedback from the community regarding it. Regular public disclosures are also seen as part of its commitment to transparency.

According to this report, since February 25, the network uptime has maintained a level of 100%. Since December 2022, the average TPS has remained stable, while the maximum TPS has been steadily increasing, with a significant rise in the second half of 2022.

Additionally, Solana has launched several new features, including QUIC TPU, stake-weighted QoS, and localized fee markets, among others.

The introduction of the new NFT technology structure "state compression" is particularly noteworthy, as this feature can significantly reduce the minting costs of NFTs by several orders of magnitude. Minting 100 million NFTs now only requires 50 SOL. State compression was developed for NFTs but can be applied to other applications, potentially bringing more use cases to the Solana network.

In April 2023, the Helium network successfully completed its migration to the Solana network, a process that was smooth and seamless.

Summary

The performance of the Solana network has improved in the first half of 2023. Specifically, its condition is measured through parameters such as uptime, voting transaction ratio, block time, and TPS.

Since the last network performance report was released in October 2022, the Solana network has undergone several significant improvements, including:

• v1.14 was successfully released on the mainnet. A network interruption occurred on February 25 (during the last software upgrade), which led to an improvement measure. Since February 25, the network has experienced 100% uptime.
• Network upgrades to better handle high traffic. Initiatives such as QUIC TPU, stake-weighted QoS, and localized fee markets were launched. Since the network upgrade, the network has performed well during high-pressure periods (e.g., during the MadLads NFT minting).
• Introduction of state compression, a new method for storing data directly on-chain, which can reduce costs by several orders of magnitude. Minting 100 million NFTs on Solana now only requires 50 SOL.

The Solana network continues to be operated by a robust group of independent validators from around the world. It is one of the most decentralized PoS blockchains in the world and one of the most developed blockchains. Below, we provide some statistics tracked by the Solana Foundation to measure the decentralization and vitality of the Solana network (data as of July 11, 2023):

(Note: These numbers represent the number of nodes, not independent operators. It is not possible to confirm how many independent validators or RPC operators there are.)

Network Performance Overview

To enable a billion people to benefit from the Solana network, users need to have confidence in the overall reliability of the network: the ability to continuously access the network, the accuracy of network-related information, transaction speed, and the security of funds and information.

Here are some metrics tracked by the foundation to understand how the network measures this goal. For simplicity, we focus on four metrics and allow users to easily track these metrics and their progress over time. We have included these metrics and some others on the Dune dashboard, allowing you to easily delve into the data layer and run your own analyses.

Uptime

A consistently reliable network is the foundation of network trust and sustained growth. One of the most important measures of reliability is network uptime.

We snapshot the network's monthly uptime to measure the uptime percentage for a given month over the past six months.

Voting Transaction Rate

Voting transactions are necessary for the operation of the network, as they create the decentralized consensus on which the blockchain relies. Voting transactions occur when validators vote to confirm one or more proposed blocks. Non-voting transactions are triggered by user actions on the blockchain. For example, a non-voting transaction may represent an NFT minting or a user transferring tokens from one wallet to another. The network requires a certain number of voting transactions to reach consensus, but over time, we hope to see the ratio of voting to non-voting transactions decrease, as the overall percentage of voting transactions should decline with increased network efficiency.

Here is the ratio of voting to non-voting transactions over the past six months.

Block Time

Block time measures the speed of a single transaction, as it measures how quickly the network adds more "blocks" to the blockchain. In this chart, we see the average time to generate blocks, the consistency of this metric, and how it changes over time.

The peak at the end of February is related to the network interruption on February 25.

Average and Maximum TPS

TPS most accurately reflects the current throughput of the network and demonstrates its potential for growth over time. The benchmark is 65,000 transactions per second. Due to the different combinations of complex transactions on the network, as well as demand based on any given moment, actual TPS will vary. For example, purchasing an NFT is much more complex than simply moving native tokens between wallets.

It is important to note that TPS does not reflect network capacity but rather reflects the demand for the number of transactions. In almost all cases, the mainnet test version has been operating below capacity.

The following chart is a snapshot of the network's real-time performance. It is divided into average TPS for a given date and maximum TPS, broken down by date. Since December 2022, the average TPS has remained relatively similar, but there has been some volatility associated with high network demand. Since January 2022, maximum TPS has been steadily increasing, with a significant rise in the second half of 2022, which is related to the new network upgrades.

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Highlights of the Network Since the October 2022 Report

In 2022, the Solana network experienced several slowdowns or interruptions during periods of high activity (e.g., during large NFT minting). In response, core developers launched network upgrades, including QUIC, stake-weighted QoS, and localized fee markets. Since the introduction of these upgrades, the network has performed very well during high-pressure periods (e.g., during the MadLads NFT minting). Developers are also continuing to test and develop other network upgrades and plans, including increasing the maximum transaction size (currently limited to 1232 bytes) and simplifying voting logic to reduce the total amount of data that needs to be transmitted and stored.

• QUIC TPU: QUIC is a network protocol designed by Google for fast asynchronous communication, but with session and traffic control features. QUIC can be used to limit traffic from any one participant, allowing the network to focus on truly valid transactions. QUIC has been added to the port that introduces user transactions.
• Stake-weighted QoS: Stake-weighted QoS is used to effectively allocate leader network bandwidth. It does not indiscriminately accept first-come-first-served transactions but provides access to transmitted information, so a node with 0.5% stake will have the right to transmit at least 0.5% of the packets to the leader. This can enhance the network's resilience by suppressing spam or malicious actors. Stake-weighted QoS has been added to the QUIC TPU port.
• Localized Fee Market: The fee market provides users with a way to add additional fees to their transactions to express urgency compared to other transactions. Priority fees are calculated based on the expected computational resources required for the transaction. For example, the total priority fee required for a simple token transfer is lower than that for an NFT minting that expresses the same urgency. This process makes the market more efficient by allowing users to express urgency and prioritize transactions.

Improved Upgrade Process: To address the network interruption on February 25, Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko published a blog post suggesting the introduction of a new process for software releases to make the upgrade process more resilient in the face of new upgrades for network expansion. This includes bringing in other external developers and auditors into the release process to test and find vulnerabilities, improving the server restart process, emphasizing network stability, and forming adversarial teams. Some of these proposals have already taken effect, including:

Comprehensive Upgrade Process on Testnet: To simulate the upgrade process, the testnet now first downgrades to a previous software version and then simulates the software upgrade process that will be launched on the mainnet. Previously, the testnet was a secondary version of the mainnet during mainnet upgrades.

Optimizing Tools for Manual Restarts: For example, initial designs are in place to automate some more mechanical steps (SIMD 0046).

Adversarial testing is being run against private clusters and the testnet: These tests are currently running in an ad-hoc manner as core engineers work to build a more formal testing plan. Relatedly, the Solana Labs validator reference client now has an adversarial port, and core lab engineers are adding configurations that can be used to build adversarial testing scenarios.

Smooth Release of 1.14.17: Version 1.14 was considered officially adopted on May 22, when over 66.6% of stakers had upgraded to 1.14. This was the first major network upgrade since the interruption on February 25 and the rollout of the aforementioned improved upgrade process. As of May 30, version 1.14 of the Solana validator client was adopted by 97.4% of the stake on the Solana network.

Compressed NFTs and State Compression: Compressed NFTs are now live on the Solana mainnet test version. Compressed NFTs are cheaper to operate than uncompressed NFTs, with costs reduced by 2400-24000 times. Minting 100 million NFTs on Solana now only requires 50 SOL. This new NFT technology structure is called "state compression." State compression unlocks many new use cases and expands the potential impact of the blockchain by making NFTs available for use cases such as sending messages or enhancing customer loyalty programs. State compression was developed for NFTs but can be applied to other applications. In short, state compression involves storing some data on the blockchain that would otherwise be stored on each machine.

Smooth Helium Migration: In April 2023, the Helium network successfully completed its migration to the Solana network, a process that was relatively seamless for Helium network participants and did not cause significant disruption to the Solana network. The migration of Helium utilized state compression to mint NFTs, which is more efficient and cheaper than other methods.

Other Progress on Firedancer: Firedancer is the Solana validator client developed by Jump Crypto, which is adding and testing more components.

• QUIC Implementation Demonstration: Firedancer recently demonstrated a high-performance QUIC implementation, which should lead to more efficient data transactions.

• Reed-Solomon Erasure Coding Release: Turbine is a mechanism in validators responsible for distributing "shards" (block fragments) to other validators in the cluster. Reed-Solomon is an error-correcting coding scheme that helps accurately encode data in these shards before transmitting it to other validators.

Tinydancer: Tinydancer is the first lightweight client on Solana, developed as part of the Solana Foundation Grizzlython Hackathon. A lightweight client is a software client that can run locally on simple devices like laptops, connecting to full nodes in the network to verify the state of the ledger and check for invalid state transitions.

Real-time Emission Monitoring: In April 2023, Solana became the first major smart contract blockchain to measure its carbon footprint in real-time. The independent startup TryCarbonara launched www.solanaclimate.com to track the network's impact.

Network Challenges Since October 2022

Since the last network performance report in October 2022, the Solana network has experienced an interruption. No user funds were lost during this event.

February 2023 Interruption: On February 25, the mainnet Beta began experiencing prolonged block finalization times. Upon investigation, the cause was traced back to several services running custom block forwarding software on the network, which inadvertently transmitted a massive amount of data, equivalent to several orders of magnitude larger than normal blocks. The network's deduplication logic could not cope with this, overwhelming the Turbine protocol and significantly degrading network performance. After diagnosing this issue, core engineers created enhancements to the deduplication logic, which have now been implemented starting from Solana Labs validator client v1.13.7 and v1.14.17. This will also be alleviated through long-term Solana protocol design to replace all UDP-based network protocols with QUIC, which will better enforce constraints in Turbine. Read the full interruption report here.

Several proposed network upgrades have been implemented or are being rolled out to address the causes of this interruption, particularly the implementation of QUIC, fee markets, and stake-weighted QoS.

Upcoming Initiatives

Solana core developers have been working on several new network upgrades aimed at strengthening the network in the face of massive user growth and adoption.

These Solana Improvement Documents (SIMD) are proposed design documents regarding how to make changes to the network that require coordination across multiple core development teams. A recently accepted SIMD is SIMD-33: Timely Voting Points, which grants points based on the number of slots voted on, rewarding more for low-latency voting. This aims to reduce block finalization times and suppress intentional delayed voting.

The latest version includes several network upgrades, but these features have not yet been activated. The new features can greatly improve network latency. The new version also allows users to undelegate nodes that are overdue for staking on the network, thereby reducing the skip rate and improving performance. (Note: Undelegated staking accounts remain under the control of the original staker and can be freely redelegated to active validators or withdraw their funds).

Users can continue to monitor the performance of the Solana network and help the community track its development over time through the Solana network report.