Some Solana Validators May Be Optimized to Skip Blocks for Higher Rewards (But v1.17 Seems to Have Fixed This)

Validators play a crucial role in the Solana network. Each is responsible for tracking all accounts in the Solana cluster and validating transactions before they are added to the network. It is the validators’ duty to ensure the accuracy of the data recorded on the blockchain and participate in the consensus process.

Recently, concerns were voiced about the fairness of some validators’ actions in Solana. Particularly, certain operators may have optimized their validators to produce higher rewards at the expense of a higher skip rate, which may have an adverse effect on Solana’s overall performance and integrity.

This article explores how this tweaking may have been done and how to fix this problem.

Unfair Optimization?

In the Solana network, the allocation of rewards to validators is significantly influenced by a specific metric known as vote credit. Vote credit is determined by the number of slots for which a validator successfully votes, with a potential maximum for all validators being 432,000. Importantly, the skip rate, which indicates how often a leader fails to generate a block in their allocated slots, does not impact this metric.

Some validators seem to have discovered and exploited a loophole in this system to increase their rewards. They altered the validator code to vote immediately upon recognizing the need to vote for a particular slot, bypassing the standard procedure of checking the slot in a program loop. This manipulation effectively breaks the ability to produce new slots but maximizes the vote credit.

Typically, honest validators vote for slots in a sequential order, as there’s no option to skip a slot and then return to it later. Still, with the optimization described above, votes can occur out of order. This leads to an increased skip rate for individual validators and, consequently, for the entire Solana network, which translates to a lower success in block generation.

Everstake’s data and observations suggest this might be the case as the skip rate has recently been unusually high, reaching 7 percent.

Although this tactic doesn’t affect the annual percentage rate (APR) for those who delegate their tokens for staking, it does impact supplementary rewards for validators producing blocks. This effectively means that delegators who stake their SOL with such validators may be unwillingly harming the network’s overall performance while the validators sow the fruits of this unfair play. 

Putting priority on personal gain while performing crucial tasks may be seen as dishonest behavior in the decentralized ecosystem that is Solana. Still, there are reasons to believe that the newest Solana update, 1.17, has addressed the issue and enforced more fair behavior.

Is Solana v1.17 a Solution?

The description of v1.17 doesn’t explicitly or indirectly state it, yet our data suggest that the skip rate has massively shrunk after its release.

Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, yet it seems that the optimization described above is no longer possible, or at least not as easy to implement as before. In any case, the decreased skip rate means that the overall network health and stability have improved. 

Conclusion

Everstake prioritizes the integrity of the Solana network in all our operations. We do not engage in practices aimed at increasing the skip rate for higher rewards and will never do that. Instead, our prime objective is to maintain the stability and reliability of the Solana blockchain.

Everstake has implemented numerous safety measures to ensure our validators operate effectively, such as automatic failover for its Solana nodes.

The honest behavior of validators is crucial for the safety and overall appeal of a blockchain network. Networks rely on the integrity of validators to ensure transactions are accurately verified and added to the blockchain in a trustworthy manner. When validators act honestly and prioritize the network’s health over personal gain, it enhances the blockchain’s reliability and trustworthiness. This, in turn, can lead to long-term benefits for the validators, as a healthy, trustworthy, and secure network attracts more users and builders. 

At the end of the day, fair play is not just a moral choice. It is also a strategic approach that aligns with the long-term success of any blockchain ecosystem and eventually benefits everyone.