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Solana became well-known for its exceptional performance among Layer 1 blockchains by making significant trade-offs and departing from many conventional blockchain designs. Moreover, Solana benefits from a distinctive advantage in the communication field thanks to the background of its co-founders. Consequently, Solana has successfully implemented multiple optimizations on its messaging layer.

Recap of the Previous Architecture

PoH: The Starting Point

When discussing Solana, it is important to consider PoH, as the following features are all designed to coordinate with it.

Many people may think of PoH as a new consensus algorithm, but in reality, PoH is not a consensus mechanism. Instead, it acts as a clock that operates before consensus. The PoH clock allows the leader validator to bypass the need for a global consensus on the timestamp and sequence of transactions, thus enabling faster transaction execution.

Essentially, PoH is a specialized Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) that can handle high-frequency calculations. For those unfamiliar with VDF, it is a function that requires a specific number of sequential steps for evaluation, and the result can be efficiently verified. VDFs are commonly used to measure duration. In the case of PoH, its hash chain includes hashes of any data observed by the application, ensuring that the data existed before the subsequent hashes. An important aspect of VDFs is their ability to convert large inputs into fixed outputs.

In practice, the leader timestamps transactions, allowing validators to retrieve the public key of the designated leader. The leader then signs the timestamp, enabling validators to verify the signature and confirm that the signer is the owner of the designated leader's public key. Users can then send transactions to the designated validator.

Each block includes cryptographic proof, which allows anyone to verify that a certain amount of time has elapsed since the last proof. All data hashed into the proof has undoubtedly occurred prior to the generation of the proof. There is no specific time requirement for when this block reaches each validator, as it may arrive in any order or even be replayed years later.

Tower BFT: Optimized Version of PBFT for PoH

Solana uses Tower BFT as its consensus algorithm, which is an optimized version of PBFT designed specifically for Proof of History. Similar to traditional PBFT, the active set of validators consists of all staked accounts with leader identities that have voted within a cluster-configured number of ticks. The leader schedule for each epoch is calculated based on the ledger state at the beginning of the previous epoch.

Tower BFT has a few notable differences compared to other PBFT algorithms. Thanks to the Proof of History clock, Tower BFT doesn't require all validators to agree on a newly produced block before moving on to the next one. Instead, the next slot leader can directly build on top of the current slot leader. Another significant difference is that voting messages are treated as transactions in Solana. This design choice is what enables Solana to achieve nearly 90% of the TPS (transactions per second) observed on its network. The actual TPS is approximately 400, which is quite impressive when compared to other Layer 1 protocols.

Mempool-Less Transaction Forwarding

The unique design of Solana allows for efficient transaction processing through a pre-decided leader validator set and the separation of consensus and execution. Unlike other protocols, such as Ethereum, Solana does not rely on a mempool for transaction propagation. Instead, all transactions, whether initiated programmatically or by end-users, are promptly routed to leaders for inclusion in blocks.

With this mempool-less approach, the lifecycle of a transaction in Solana is significantly shorter compared to traditional blockchains. This eliminates gossip time and inherently improves the overall efficiency of the process.

Turbine Block Propagation

Solana introduces turbine block propagation to enhance efficiency in node communications. Unlike traditional gossip networks, transactions are divided into batches, enabling a node to send transactions to multiple parties without generating multiple copies.

Solana validators organize transactions into smaller batches known as "entries." In a network with 15 validators, if the fanout size is set to 3, the leader node initially broadcasts to a special root node located at the top of the turbine tree. The root node then shares the data with 3 nodes in the first layer. Nodes in this layer further transmit the data to a subset of nodes in the next layer. This process continues, with each node in a layer retransmitting to a unique subset of nodes in the next layer, until all nodes in the cluster have received all the data shreds.

This approach reduces communication costs and enhances the efficiency of block propagation in the Solana network.

Alpenglow: Increase Bandwidth Reduce Latency

Anza research (Professor Roger Wattenhofer and two of his recent PhD students, Kobi Sliwinski and Quentin Kniep, from ETH Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) in Switzerland), a recently established branch of Solana Labs, has unveiled Alpenlow, a groundbreaking consensus protocol poised to replace the existing system. Named after the atmospheric phenomenon of a rosy glow on alpine peaks, Alpenlow promises significant advancements in latency, security, and overall protocol elegance. This report provides a comprehensive overview of Alpenlow's key features, its underlying design principles, and the projected roadmap for its implementation.

Practical and Aggressive: The "20% + 20%" Model

Alpenlow introduces a sophisticated security model that rethinks the traditional approach to Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). Instead of a single threshold for all types of failures, Alpenlow differentiates between malicious actors and non-malicious failures, such as power outages or network interruptions. This innovative "20% + 20% security" model is designed to provide robust protection against a combination of threats.

The protocol is engineered to withstand up to 40% of the network experiencing a combination of malicious and non-malicious failures. This is a significant increase from the standard 33% BFT, which typically only accounts for malicious attacks. The underlying philosophy is that malicious attacks are rare and can be penalized, allowing for a more nuanced and resilient security posture.

The Elegance of Simplicity: A Streamlined Protocol

A core tenet of Alpenlow's design is simplicity. A more streamlined protocol is not only more efficient but also inherently faster. To achieve this, several key components of the current Solana architecture have been removed or fundamentally redesigned:

In place of these removed components, Alpenlow introduces two new protocols: Rotor and Voter.

The Engines of Alpenlow: Voter and Rotor

Rotor: The Data Dissemination Powerhouse

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Rotor is a revamped version of the Turbine protocol, serving as the primary mechanism for data dissemination. The key innovation in Rotor is its single-layer design. In this model, the leader node directly sends erasure-coded slices of a block to all relay nodes in a pipelined fashion. This direct-to-all approach is incredibly fast, with the data dissemination process expected to take only a few milliseconds. To incentivize nodes to handle the high bandwidth required for this, a reward system is also being planned.

Turbine features a technique where each block is erasure-coded into many smaller pieces which can be disseminated rapidly.

Rotor utilizes the bandwidth of participating nodes proportionally to their stake, alleviating the leader bottleneck for high throughput, total available bandwidth is used asymptotically optimally.

Rotor features a single layer of relay nodes, as opposed to the multi-layer tree of Turbine. In this way, Rotor minimizes the number of network hops. Moreover, Rotor introduces new techniques to determine the relay nodes, resulting in improved resilience.

Voter: A Modernized Voting Mechanism, takes over the voting and block finalization logic.

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Voter is an entirely new voting protocol based on cutting-edge academic research. Its operation is elegantly simple:

  1. Nodes use system timeouts to determine if a block was received in a timely manner.
  2. Based on this, they cast a "good" or "bad" vote.
  3. These votes are broadcast to the entire network.

The decision-making process is swift and decisive:

The correctness of the Voter protocol is rigorously backed by a detailed academic paper with mathematical proofs, ensuring its reliability and security.

Voting messages: BLS signatures data into UDP

Optimistic Confirmation

With TowerBFT, Solana had about 12.8 sec from block creation until block finality.

Alpenglow can achieve actual finality in about 150 ms (median). Sometimes finality can be achieved as fast as 100 ms, which is an unbelievably low number for a world-wide L1 blockchain protocol.

Solana can compete with Web2 infrastructure in terms of responsiveness, potentially making blockchain technology viable for entirely new categories of applications that demand real-time performance.

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Unprecedented Performance: Sub-Second Finality

A primary driver behind the development of Alpenlow is the quest for reduced transaction finality time. While Solana already boasts high transactions per second (TPS), the Anza team aimed to drastically cut down the time it takes for a transaction to be irreversibly confirmed on the network.

Through extensive simulations, Alpenlow has demonstrated a median finality of approximately 150 milliseconds. This is a remarkable improvement, positioning Solana to be significantly faster than competing blockchains, some of which claim finality times in the range of 400 milliseconds. It's crucial to note that this is full and final confirmation, not merely an optimistic confirmation that could be subject to later reversal.

In terms of bandwidth, while the existing Turbine protocol is considered near-optimal, Alpenlow is expected to offer slight improvements. The main focus, however, remains firmly on latency reduction.

The Road Ahead: Development and Deployment

Alpenlow is currently in its official reveal phase. The Anza research team is now moving into a period of extensive testing to ensure the protocol's stability and performance in real-world conditions. The projected timeline for the deployment of Alpenlow is towards the end of the current year or early next year. This phased and cautious rollout underscores the commitment to a secure and seamless transition for the Solana network.

In conclusion, Alpenlow represents a significant leap forward for the Solana blockchain. Its focus on drastically reduced latency, a more nuanced and robust security model, and a simplified and elegant protocol design promises to deliver a more performant and resilient network for users and developers alike.

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Launchpad War

IBRL: Increase Bandwidth Reduce Latency

On-chain token distribution and liquidity bootstrapping platform.

Two Phases:

  1. Initial token distribution period:  collect capital that will be deployed for on-chain liquidity, and optionally for the team raising to fund operations, with Dutch auction, fixed price FCFS, permissioned choices
    • mix-and-match components, based on the goals of the distribution, amount allocated to Gavel’s mechanisms, etc.
  2. Sandwich-resistant AMM: After the public sale has ended, liquidity is added to Gavel's AMM using the remaining token inventory, and a portion of the SOL that was collected. The amount of SOL is chosen to ensure that the opening price on the AMM matches the public sale clearing price.
    • Transient Liquidity: On a fixed schedule, it withdraws a portion of the liquidity, swaps it for the coin, and burns the coin. The schedule is configurable.

$IBRL: is a test token that exists solely to demonstrate the Gavel protocol in production. The token has no present or future utility.

Believe: Internet Capital Market, Leading Meteora

WaterMinder

PCLUE: Polymarket Telegram Trading Bot

PCULE Required Fee Rate
0 1.00%
10,000 0.95%
25,000 0.90%
50,000 0.85%
100,000 0.80%
250,000 0.75%
500,000 0.70%
1,000,000 0.65%
2,500,000 0.60%
5,000,000 0.55%
10,000,000+ 0.50%

AIXBC

Bonk: Flipping Pump, Leading Raydium

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Reference

  1. Alpenglow Whitepaper
  2. Alpenglow: A New Consensus for Solana - Anza
  3. Anza Research: A New Chapter for Solana’s Protocol - Anza
  4. A Sandwich-Resistant AMM