Ship or Die at Accelerate 2025: IBRL (Kevin Bowers - Firedancer, Brennan Watt - Anza)

Solana is about to unleash unprecedented blockchain performance, with transaction speeds rivaling traditional finance systems. The "Increased Bandwidth, Reduced Latency" (IBRL) initiative is set to revolutionize the crypto landscape, potentially processing millions of transactions per second.

Summary

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At Accelerate 2025, Kevin Bowers from Firedancer and Brennan Watt from ANZA unveiled groundbreaking developments in Solana's blockchain technology. The presentation focused on the IBRL (Increased Bandwidth, Reduced Latency) initiative, which aims to dramatically improve Solana's performance and scalability.

Firedancer, a new validator client, has been making waves in the Solana ecosystem. Early hybrid versions, dubbed "Frankendancer," have been running on testnet since late 2023 and on mainnet since mid-2024, already representing a significant portion of network stake. The Firedancer team has achieved impressive milestones, including a software transaction pipeline capable of processing 1.2 million transactions per second.

ANZA, the company behind Agave (the dominant validator client), has also been pushing the boundaries of blockchain performance. Recent improvements have led to significantly reduced slot latency, lower skip rates, and faster transaction confirmation times. Both teams are committed to further enhancing Solana's capabilities, with promises to "make it rain block space" in the coming year.

The presentation highlighted the importance of optimizing various aspects of the blockchain, including memory allocation, latency reduction, block propagation, and transaction scheduling. These improvements are crucial for Solana to compete with traditional finance systems and big tech, potentially unlocking new use cases and possibilities in gaming, real-world assets, and stablecoins.

Key Points:

Firedancer's Progress and Achievements

Firedancer, a new Solana validator client, has been making significant strides in improving blockchain performance. The team has been running hybrid versions called "Frankendancer" on testnet since late 2023 and on mainnet since mid-2024. These early versions have already gained substantial traction, representing about a third of testnet stake and over 6% of mainnet stake.

One of Firedancer's most impressive achievements is the development of a software transaction pipeline capable of processing 1.2 million transactions per second. This breakthrough demonstrates the potential for massive scalability improvements in the Solana ecosystem. Additionally, the team has showcased hardware-accelerated signature verification capabilities, reaching up to 8 million verifications per second per host using FPGA technology.

ANZA's Agave Improvements

ANZA, the company behind the Agave validator client, has been focusing on enhancing Solana's performance metrics. Their efforts have resulted in significant improvements across various areas:

1. Slot latency has been reduced to under 400 milliseconds, a considerable improvement from previous levels.
2. Skip rates have dropped to below 0.5%, indicating a more efficient and reliable network.
3. Transaction confirmation latencies have decreased dramatically, with many transactions achieving single-slot latency (under one second).

These improvements contribute to a smoother user experience and pave the way for more demanding applications on the Solana blockchain.

IBRL Initiative and Future Plans

Both Firedancer and ANZA are committed to the IBRL (Increased Bandwidth, Reduced Latency) initiative, which aims to dramatically improve Solana's performance and scalability. The teams are focusing on several key areas to achieve these goals:

1. Aggressively reducing memory allocations to optimize resource usage.
2. Tightening up latency on the "hot path" - the critical code executed for every transaction.
3. Improving the Turbine block propagation protocol to handle increased network demands.
4. Enhancing the transaction scheduler to optimize block creation and execution.

The ultimate goal is to increase Solana's capacity to handle millions of transactions per second, rivaling traditional finance systems and unlocking new use cases in gaming, real-world assets, and stablecoins.

Ecosystem-wide Improvements

The presentation emphasized that improving Solana's performance isn't just about individual validator clients. It requires ecosystem-wide enhancements, including:

1. Optimizing network connectivity between validators to distribute transaction filtering and execution more efficiently.
2. Developing community-wide area networks optimized for decentralized protocols like Solana.
3. Implementing distributed hardware filtering to improve resilience against DDoS attacks.

These improvements aim to level the playing field for decentralized applications, allowing them to compete more effectively with traditional finance and big tech infrastructure.

Facts + Figures

• Frankendancer represents about a third of testnet stake and over 6% of mainnet stake
• Firedancer achieved a software transaction pipeline with 1.2 million transactions per second capacity
• Hardware-accelerated signature verification reached 1 million verifications per second on a single FPGA
• Using 8 FPGAs, signature verification scaled to roughly 8 million verifications per second per host
• A demo with 100 modified Frankendancers processed over 1 million simple distributed transactions per second
• Solana's slot times are now under 400 milliseconds
• Skip rates have dropped to under 0.5%
• Many transactions are now achieving single-slot latency (under one second)
• Solana is often bumping up against its maximum transaction capacity
• Current high-stake validators handle 150,000 packets per second for Turbine block propagation
• The Turbine protocol on mainnet involves around 6,000 nodes with a fan-out of 200

Top quotes

1. "Solana built a brand that would be in the high performance chain with low fees. Being decentralized and permissionless are mere table stakes. They are not an excuse to be slow or expensive."

2. "We are the hipsters of IBRL. We were increasing bandwidth and reducing latency before it was cool."

3. "We're taking the performance messages that Kevin just covered to heart. And in case you haven't noticed, the network is looking really nice right now from an engineering perspective."

4. "We are going to make it rain block space this year."

5. "A gig of a gets per second attack is a you problem, but a terabits per second attack is a we problem."

6. "Solana is ready to compete with big tech and traditional finance and we can't stop, won't stop, IBR yelling."

7. "We don't do roadmaps. We do releases. It truly is ship or die."

Questions Answered

What is IBRL and why is it important for Solana?

IBRL stands for Increased Bandwidth, Reduced Latency, and it's a key initiative for Solana's development. IBRL is crucial because it aims to dramatically improve Solana's performance and scalability, allowing the blockchain to process more transactions faster and more efficiently. This improvement is essential for Solana to compete with traditional finance systems and big tech, potentially enabling new use cases in areas like gaming, real-world assets, and stablecoins.

What is Firedancer and how does it differ from existing Solana validators?

Firedancer is a new Solana validator client being developed as an alternative to the existing Agave client. It's designed from the ground up to optimize data flow and maximize performance. Firedancer has already achieved impressive milestones, such as a software transaction pipeline capable of processing 1.2 million transactions per second. The key difference is that Firedancer provides a second, independent implementation of the Solana protocol, which enhances the network's resilience and fosters innovation.

How has Solana's performance improved recently?

Solana's performance has seen significant improvements in several key areas. Slot times have been reduced to under 400 milliseconds, skip rates have dropped to below 0.5%, and many transactions are now achieving single-slot latency (under one second). These improvements result in a smoother user experience and more efficient network operation. Additionally, the network is consistently reaching its maximum transaction capacity, indicating strong demand for block space.

What are some of the technical improvements being made to Solana?

Several technical improvements are being implemented to enhance Solana's performance. These include aggressively reducing memory allocations, tightening up latency on the transaction processing hot path, improving the Turbine block propagation protocol, and enhancing the transaction scheduler. Additionally, there are efforts to optimize network connectivity between validators and develop community-wide area networks specifically designed for decentralized protocols like Solana.

How does Solana plan to handle potential DDoS attacks?

Solana is working on improving its resilience to DDoS attacks through distributed hardware filtering. By connecting validators more flexibly and utilizing the entire network's filtering resources, the system can better withstand large-scale attacks. This approach shifts the challenge from overwhelming a single validator to requiring an attacker to target many geographically dispersed nodes simultaneously, making such attacks much more difficult and costly to execute.