On April 9, a proposal to lower consensus “vote” delay and possibly speed up blockchain transactions was overwhelmingly approved by Solana validators, with 98% voting in favor.
The “Timely Vote Credits” mechanism is a new feature of the proposal that aims to alter the incentives for validators to validate transactions. Since validators now only receive a single vote credit for every consensus vote, some choose to postpone voting in order to increase their earnings without incurring penalties.
The new system will discourage deliberate delays by rewarding votes with less latency with more credits, as suggested by Solana validator Shinobi Systems. Data from Solana Compass indicates that approximately 2,000 vote transactions and 1,000 user transactions occur every second.
The modification, which addresses network congestion and priority fee issues, is anticipated to roll out following the v1.18 upgrade, though its exact impact is still unknown. Concurrently, a QUIC implementation problem is causing transaction failures in Solana; if testing goes well, a fix is planned for April 15.
