Solana co-founder calls for punishing Solana validators who intentionally delay block slots, steal rewards, and slow down the network.

Jinse Finance reported that Solana co-founder Anatoly “Toly” Yakovenko has called for penalties against Solana validators who delay slots, steal rewards, and cause the network to slow down. Yakovenko's call for punishment stems from his frustration with validators using complex delay strategies to obtain extra fees and high-value transactions. The intentional delay of slot times has become so troublesome that one validator even created a dashboard to showcase the issue. Since August 5—Solana epoch 829—the average slot time has increased by 2.5%. Some have complained: “It should be the price of SOL going up, not the block time.” An observer asked whether these delays could trigger a version 2.0 situation similar to “Intentional Leader Reward Boosting (ILRB).” ILRB is a timing strategy used by some validators who intentionally delay block production. Extending slot times beyond Solana’s expected 400 milliseconds intentionally delays the process, allowing them to unfairly pack more transactions into their own blocks and thus obtain higher fees or rewards. Yakovenko suggested “by default, discard these blocks for 10 slots” as a penalty for those slow but influential validators. He has also repeatedly called for economic penalties for misbehaving validators. Currently, Solana developer shop Anza has put forward a series of proposals considering the implementation of a slashing mechanism in the network, which would penalize validators by deducting their stake, but this would also pose risks to SOL stakers.