Tech Talk: Chorus One - The Future of Solana's Performance

Solana is on the verge of a complete architectural transformation that could finally deliver on its vision of becoming the backbone for global internet capital markets. At Breakpoint 2025, Brian Crain, a long-time Solana validator operator and investor from Chorus One, revealed the ambitious roadmap that will fundamentally change how the network operates—from consensus mechanisms to block production—with some changes potentially arriving as early as 2027.

Summary

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The presentation delivered a comprehensive analysis of where Solana stands today and the major technical upgrades that will reshape its future. While Solana has made tremendous progress—finally achieving consistent sub-400 millisecond block times after years of development and dramatically reducing skip rates and downtime—the network still has significant work ahead to accommodate the scale of economic activity envisioned by its founders.

Crain, whose firm has been involved with Solana since meeting Tolian Raj in 2018 and participated in the first testnets, highlighted several concerning trends including current economic activity being at a two-year low point and priority fees declining significantly from their peak during the memecoin boom. However, the real focus of his talk was on the transformative changes in the pipeline.

The most revolutionary change discussed was Multiple Concurrent Proposals (MCP), which Crain described as "one of the most ambitious changes in all of blockchain architecture." Instead of having a single leader create blocks, MCP would have multiple validators—potentially 15 to 100—creating partial blocks simultaneously. This approach would fundamentally disrupt current MEV extraction strategies and could significantly reduce network latency while providing faster transaction confirmations.

Key Points:

Current State of Solana's Performance

Solana has experienced remarkable improvement in network reliability and performance over recent years. The network has finally achieved its target of consistent sub-400 millisecond block times, a goal that took years to realize—despite the theoretical capability existing since the network's inception, actual performance often hovered around 500-600 milliseconds. Skip rates, which measure how often blocks are missed, have dropped dramatically, making skipped blocks a rare occurrence rather than a regular problem.

The network currently processes approximately 400 user transactions per block, making it arguably the most economically active blockchain in existence. However, Crain noted that current economic activity sits at a two-year low, with priority fees having retreated significantly from the heights seen during the Trump-era memecoin frenzy. This creates pressure on validator earnings and underscores the need for continued technical improvement to attract and sustain economic activity.

The Rise of Custom Schedulers

One of the most interesting developments in Solana's current landscape is the explosion of custom schedulers—different approaches to how validators process and order transactions during their block production window. The default client processes transactions quickly at the beginning of a slot and then tapers off, but alternative approaches have emerged.

Some schedulers wait and process all transactions at the end of the block production window, which can generate more revenue for validators. Jito's BAM scheduler attempts a different approach, maintaining a regular cadence with small processing ticks throughout the block. While this diversity allows validators to differentiate and potentially earn higher yields, it creates unpredictability for application developers who cannot rely on consistent transaction ordering behavior across the network.

Alpenglow: A Complete Consensus Rewrite

Alpenglow represents a fundamental reimagining of Solana's consensus algorithm with far-reaching implications. The upgrade will dramatically reduce time to finality and facilitate decreasing slot times, which could benefit various aspects of network performance and user experience.

Perhaps most significantly for network economics, Alpenglow eliminates the requirement for validators to pay fees for vote transactions. Currently, validators must send transactions to vote on chain state and pay approximately one Solana per day in fixed costs. This creates an unusual dynamic where smaller validators effectively subsidize larger ones—a system Crain described as making "no sense." With Alpenglow, this cost structure will be eliminated, potentially making small-scale validation more economically viable.

Double Zero: Replacing Internet Infrastructure

Double Zero aims to create a high-performance fiber network to replace standard internet routing for Solana traffic. Chorus One recently conducted experiments testing the technology's effectiveness, finding that it helped reduce latency for validators located far from data centers, though benefits for geographically proximate nodes are still being optimized.

The primary value proposition of Double Zero will likely be providing faster access to blockspace, particularly for RPC (Remote Procedure Call) nodes. This could enable significantly better RPC services that allow users and applications to read from and write to the blockchain with lower latency, improving the overall user experience for Solana applications.

Proposer-Builder Separation: Multiple Competing Approaches

The concept of Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), borrowed from Ethereum's architecture, represents a potential major shift in how Solana blocks are constructed. Currently, Solana validators receive transactions, create blocks, and participate in consensus all as a single role. PBS would separate block creation from validation.

Jito has developed BAM (Block Auction Marketplace), which runs block construction in a trusted execution environment to ensure predictable transaction ordering. This could standardize scheduler behavior, benefiting decentralized exchange developers, but would reduce validator roles and create centralization around a few block-producing nodes. A critical question remains unanswered: what percentage of network adoption is required before BAM provides meaningful benefits?

Harmonic represents an alternative approach more similar to Ethereum's model, where multiple builders compete by proposing blocks and validators choose which to include. This could preserve innovation and diversity but at the cost of predictability, with profit-maximizing schedulers likely winning out.

Multiple Concurrent Proposals: The Most Ambitious Change

Multiple Concurrent Proposals (MCP) stands as the most revolutionary change on Solana's roadmap. Rather than a single leader processing transactions and creating blocks, MCP would have many validators—estimates range from 15 to 100—simultaneously creating partial blocks. Whichever validator includes a transaction first would receive the associated rewards.

This architecture would completely transform the MEV landscape. Current extraction strategies depend on timing and sequencing advantages, but with dozens of validators racing to include the same transactions, these games become nearly impossible to execute. Even existing solutions like BAM and Harmonic would need fundamental redesign under MCP. Beyond MEV implications, having geographically distributed leaders simultaneously processing transactions could significantly reduce network latency, providing users with faster confirmations.

Facts + Figures

• Chorus One has been involved with Solana since meeting founders in 2018 and invested in the project before mainnet launch

• Solana's target 400 millisecond block time took years to achieve consistently, with actual performance previously around 500-600 milliseconds

• Current network throughput is approximately 400 user transactions per block

• Validator vote transaction costs are approximately one Solana per day as a fixed cost

• Economic activity on Solana is currently at its lowest point in two years

• Priority fees have retreated significantly from peaks during the Trump-era memecoin boom earlier in the year

• Multiple Concurrent Proposals could involve anywhere from 15 to 100 concurrent block producers

• MCP implementation is tentatively estimated for early 2027

• Chorus One helped patch vulnerabilities before mainnet, including one that would have allowed unlimited Solana minting

• The firm built the first liquid staking solution on Solana, though it did not survive long-term

Top Quotes

"The Solana vision is basically to create this internet capital markets where you can have people from all over the world create applications, transact with each other, potentially accommodate all kinds of economic activity."

"Despite all of the success of Solana, the ultimate vision is still far away. And the network is also still far away from being able to accommodate that vision."

"Solana's culture has always been one of radical innovation, just reinventing itself and pushing the limits."

"Multiple Concurrent Proposals is really, I think, one of the most ambitious changes in all of blockchain architecture."

"All of these MEV games, scheduling things we saw earlier, it all depends on waiting and taking some time and then doing something. But if 10 people all try to create a block at the same time, they get the same transactions, and then whoever includes it first gets the rewards, it makes it very difficult to do that."

"Small validators are paying to the big ones. It really doesn't make any sense."

"If those things happen, really we'll have a completely different network. It will look completely different, and it might actually be the kind of network that's now able to accommodate a massive amount of economic activity."

"Skipping blocks has become a rare event."

Questions Answered

Why should Solana users care about these technical upgrades?

These upgrades directly impact transaction speed, cost, and fairness for every user of the network. Alpenglow will reduce finality times, meaning your transactions confirm faster and with more certainty. The elimination of validator vote fees could reduce overall network costs and make smaller validators more viable, improving decentralization. Most importantly, Multiple Concurrent Proposals could eliminate many of the MEV extraction strategies that currently cost users money through worse execution prices and transaction ordering manipulation.

What is MEV and why does it matter?

MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) refers to the profit validators or other network participants can extract by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions. On Solana, custom schedulers have emerged that optimize transaction ordering for validator profit, creating unpredictability for application developers and potentially worse outcomes for users. The upcoming changes, particularly Multiple Concurrent Proposals, aim to neutralize many of these extraction strategies by removing the single-leader advantage that makes them possible.

When will these changes actually happen?

The timeline varies by upgrade. Double Zero is already being tested with experiments showing promise for latency reduction. Alpenglow is in active development with no confirmed date. Multiple Concurrent Proposals, described as the most ambitious change, is tentatively estimated for early 2027. These are complex architectural changes that require extensive testing before deployment, so timelines should be considered approximate.

What happens to existing solutions like Jito's BAM under Multiple Concurrent Proposals?

Current solutions like BAM and Harmonic are designed around the single-leader model where one validator produces each block. Under MCP with potentially dozens of concurrent block producers, these approaches would need fundamental redesign. The competitive dynamics completely change when multiple parties are racing to include the same transactions simultaneously, making current block auction and scheduling strategies obsolete in their current form.

How does Solana's current economic activity compare to its peak?

Economic activity measured by priority fees is at a two-year low point, having retreated significantly from the peaks seen during the memecoin boom earlier in 2025. This creates pressure on validator earnings and highlights the importance of these technical upgrades in attracting and sustaining economic activity. The network needs to continue improving to compete effectively and realize its potential as infrastructure for global capital markets.

Will these changes improve decentralization?

Several changes should improve decentralization. Eliminating validator vote fees removes a fixed cost that disadvantages smaller validators. Multiple Concurrent Proposals distributes block production across many validators simultaneously rather than concentrating power in individual leaders. However, some proposals like BAM could create new centralization around specialized block-building infrastructure, making the overall decentralization impact dependent on which approaches are ultimately adopted.