Solana's network has moved from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds on testnet, kicking off the first stage of the SIMD-0525 proposal. The end target is 200ms—cutting slot time in half and doubling block cadence.
For market makers running on Solana, faster block finality means tighter spreads. That's not a soft benefit—it's a direct structural improvement for anyone quoting on-chain.
SIMD-0525 runs in four stages, dropping 50ms at each step: 400ms to 350ms, then 300ms, 250ms and finally 200ms. Every stage is feature-gated, so the network can hold at any step if stability requires it.
The next activation window lands Aug. 17, targeting three protocol adjustments with the SIMD-0525 slot reduction leading the set. The Agave 4.1 upgrade previously shipped with the 200ms slot roadmap baked in.
Agave 4.2 brings two additional changes worth tracking. On-chain rent drops roughly 90 percent—also phased across five steps—cutting the cost of maintaining accounts and making decentralized application deployment materially chea. Maximum transaction size rises from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes, giving developers room for more complex payloads and smarter contract interactions in a single block.
Through the reduction process, core network parameters stay fixed: ticks_per_slot holds at 64, leader windows stay at four slots, and epochs remain at 432,000 slots. Per-slot work limits scale down proportionally to match the faster cadence, keeping validator load in check.
SOL trades at $73.97.
