Key Considerations for Improving Latency on Solana

Key Considerations for Improving Latency on Solana

2025.07.28
At Validators DAO, we regularly receive technical inquiries from Solana projects and high-frequency traders regarding latency improvement. These issues require specialized knowledge in networking, servers, and data centers. Therefore, we believe it is beneficial to broadly share some foundational concepts.
Even the most advanced financial strategies or trading logic must contend with the physical reality of latency. In high-speed blockchain environments like Solana, even minor delays can significantly affect trading outcomes. Hence, many projects and traders continuously strive to reduce latency.
In this article, we'll clearly outline critical points for improving latency in the Solana ecosystem.

Utilizing High-Clock CPUs and DDR5 RAM

Solana is renowned for its exceptional speed, but maximizing its potential requires maintaining high-performance environments not only on validator nodes but also for trading and application servers. CPU clock speed, in particular, is crucial.
CPUs such as AMD Ryzen or 4th-generation AMD EPYC processors feature high base clock speeds and turbo boost capabilities, enabling superior real-time performance. Combining these CPUs with DDR5 RAM further enhances memory speed and bandwidth, significantly boosting overall data processing capabilities.
Solana's recommended validator specifications call for CPUs with clock speeds of at least 2.8 GHz. Matching or exceeding these specifications in your trading environment ensures you can process real-time data streams from validators with minimal delay.

Understanding Solana Validator Locations and Leader Schedules

Solana Validators Solana Beach
The Solana network is globally distributed, with validators taking turns serving as block-producing leaders. Knowing the geographic locations and schedules of these leaders in advance can provide a significant advantage.
You can access validator location information and leader schedules through tools like the Solana Beach API and Solana's official RPC API:

Importance of Major Networks and Infrastructure

Network latency primarily depends on physical distance. Establishing infrastructure in cities or regions with high concentrations of Solana validators (such as Frankfurt, New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Singapore) can dramatically reduce latency.
Frankfurt, in particular, is a popular location for trading environments due to its dense cluster of Solana validators.

Optimal Placement of Solana RPC, Validators, and Application Deployments

Deploying your applications within the same network as your Solana RPC endpoints or validators drastically reduces network latency. Internal network communication typically achieves ping times of less than 0.1 ms, ideal for zero-block trading scenarios.

Advantages of Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers consistently provide stable and high-performance environments. In contrast, shared servers split resources among multiple users, causing significant latency spikes during peak usage periods. Choosing dedicated servers ensures greater trading reliability.

Leveraging Bare-Metal Servers

SLV Metal
Virtualized environments such as VPS or VM instances inherently divide CPU and network resources, leading to performance degradation. Bare-metal servers, by contrast, grant direct access to physical resources, ensuring stable and high-speed performance.
Validators DAO strongly recommends and provides high-performance bare-metal servers optimized for Solana workloads.

Maximizing Server Performance and Configuration Optimization

Achieving optimal performance on Solana requires not only high-end hardware but also optimized client software and OS configurations.
The open-source tool "SLV," developed by Validators DAO, comprehensively optimizes hardware performance and Solana client settings. Utilizing SLV enables effortless creation of high-performance environments.

Join Our Community

Validators DAO remains committed to ongoing research and development to advance the Solana ecosystem. For free trials or technical consultations, please reach out via the Validators DAO Official Discord.
We wish continued success for your projects and look forward to supporting you further. Thank you for your continued support of Validators DAO.