Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (2024)

Understand 1 of 8 key technologies that make Solana’s 50,000 TPS blockchain network possible.

Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (1)

Solanais the most performant permissionless blockchain in the world. On current iterations of the Solana Testnet, a network of 200 physically distinct nodes supports a sustained throughput of more than 50,000 transactions per second when running with GPUs.

There are 8 key innovations that make the Solana network possible:

  • Proof of History (POH)— a clock before consensus;
  • Tower BFT — a PoH-optimized version of PBFT;
  • Turbine — a block propagation protocol;
  • Gulf Stream— Mempool-less transaction forwarding protocol;
  • Sealevel — Parallel smart contracts run-time;
  • Pipelining — a Transaction Processing Unit for validation optimization
  • Cloudbreak— Horizontally-Scaled Accounts Database; and
  • Replicators— Distributed ledger store

In this blog post, we’ll exploreGulf Stream, Solana’s mempool management solution for a high performance adversarial network. In further blog posts, we’ll lay out all 7 of these key innovations.

Mempools Explained

A mempool is a set of transactions that have been submitted, but have not yet been processed by the network. You can see theBitcoinandEthereummempools live right now.

Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (2)

30-day Bitcoin mempool as measured inbytes.

Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (3)

30-day Ethereum mempool as measured in transactions

For Bitcoin and Ethereum, the number of unconfirmed transactions is typically on the order of 20K-100K as shown above. The size of the mempool — which is most often measured as number of unconfirmed transactions — depends on supply and demand for blockspace. Even in these early days of the blockchain era, that results in significant bottleneck effects on entire networks when the mempool rises.

So, how does Solana do better? Without increasing network throughput, Solana validators can manage a mempool size of 100,000. That means that with network throughput of 50,000 TPS, a 100,000 transaction mempool is executed in a matter of seconds. That’s what makes Solana the most performant permissionless blockchain in the world.

Impressive, right? But this simple analysis ignores a lot of important factors…

Mempools in Ethereum and Bitcoin are propagated between random nodes in peer-to-peer fashion using a gossip protocol. Nodes in the network periodically construct a bloom filter representing a local mempool and request any transactions that do not match that filter (along with a few others such as a minimal fee) from other nodes on the network. Propagation of a single transaction to the rest of the network will take at least log(N) steps, consumes bandwidth, memory and computational resources required to filter it.

When the benchmark client starts generating 100,000 transactions per second, the gossip protocols simply get overwhelmed. The cost of computing the filter, and applying the filter between machines while maintaining all the transactions in memory become prohibitively high. Leaders (block producers) also have to re-transmit the same transactions in a block, which means that every transaction is propagated at least twice through the network. That’s neither efficient nor functional.

Introducing GulfStream

Our solution to this problem on the Solana network is to push transaction caching and forwarding to the edge of the network. We call itGulf Stream.Since every validator knows the order of upcoming leaders, clients and validators forward transactions to the expected leader ahead of time. This allows validators to execute transactions ahead of time, reduce confirmation times, switch leaders faster, and reduce the memory pressure on validators from the unconfirmed transaction pool. This solution is not possible in networks that have a non-deterministic leader

So how does it work? Clients, such as wallets, sign transactions that reference a specific block-hash. Clients select a fairly recent block-hash that has been fully confirmed by the network. Blocks are proposed roughly every 800ms, and require an exponentially increasing timeout to unroll with every additional block. Using our default timeout curve, a fully confirmed block-hashes are, in the worst case, 32 blocks old. The transaction is valid only in the children of the referenced block, and is only valid for X blocks. While X is not yet finalized, we expect that a block-hash has a TTL (time to live) of about 32 blocks. Assuming block times of 800 ms, that equates to 24 seconds.

Once a transaction is forwarded to any validator, the validator forwards it to one of the upcoming leaders. Clients can subscribe to transaction confirmations from validators. Clients know that a block-hash expires in a finite period of time, or the transaction is confirmed by the network. This allows clients to sign transactions that are guaranteed to execute or fail. Once the network moves past the rollback point such that the blockhash the transaction reference has expired, clients have a guarantee that the transaction is now invalid and will never be executed on chain.

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There are a number of positive side effects inherent within this architecture. First, under load validators can execute transactions ahead of time and drop any that fail. Second, leaders can prioritize processing transactions based on stake weight of the validator that forwarded the transaction. This allows the network to degrade gracefully during a large scale denial of service.

By now, it’s become markedly clear that a blockchain network is only as functional as its mempool is minimal. While networks with limited transactional throughput undertake the noble endeavor of attempting to retrofit wholly new scaling technologies to address ever-growing mempools, Solana has been engineered since conception with optimizations likeProof of History,Gulf Stream, andSealevelto solve the problems of first generation blockchain networks and enable huge transactional throughput. That’s blazing speed at global scale from the onset, and a fundamental development in creating a highly functional decentralized infrastructure for businesses, economies, and people all over the world.

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Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (5)
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Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol (2024)

FAQs

Gulf Stream: Solana’s Mempool-less Transaction Forwarding Protocol? ›

Solana and its Mempool-Less Protocol[6]

Is there a mempool for Solana? ›

Solana doesn't have a native mempool, but the wildly popular validator software developed by Jito Labs once did.

What is the difference between ETH and Solana transactions? ›

While both projects offer similar functionality, Solana is faster and cheaper, thanks to the underlying technology. Solana can process speeds of up to 29,000 transactions per second, while Ethereum can still only manage a maximum of around 45 transactions per second, even following several key upgrades.

Is Solana DPoS? ›

Solana's main components are: Dual Consensus: This consists of the PoH mechanism paired with a delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) one. PoH allows for more efficient transaction timestamping, meaning the network can theoretically process many thousands of transactions per second.

What is the architecture of Solana's? ›

Solana employs a hybrid approach: Proof-of-History (PoH) & Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Solana's Proof of Stake based consensus is termed Tower Byzantine Fault Tolerance (Tower BFT). Unlike Bitcoin's traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) system, which relies on energy-intensive mining to validate blocks.

What blockchain is Solana on? ›

The Solana blockchain uses a proof-of-history consensus mechanism. This algorithm uses timestamps to define the next block in Solana's chain. Most early cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, use a proof-of-work algorithm to define the blocks in their chains.

What is the Solana sandwich transaction? ›

An MEV sandwich attack involves the attacker placing a victim's transaction between their own two transactions to manipulate the price & profit from the user. The attacker buys the victim's token at a price below market value and then sells it within the same block for a profit.

Which is the largest lending protocol on Solana? ›

Sharky is the leading NFT lending protocol on the Solana blockchain, providing users with a decentralized platform to borrow against their NFT holdings. With a focus on speed, security, and accessibility, Sharky aims to revolutionize the NFT lending landscape by offering innovative solutions for liquidity provision.

Will Solana overtake Ethereum? ›

While Solana's potential to overtake Ethereum remains a subject of debate, the current market dynamics suggest that Ethereum will maintain its lead in the 2024 bull run.

How much will 1 Solana be worth in 2030? ›

Solana Price Prediction Table
YearAverage Price*Percent Increase
2030$1,115.22-99.87%
2031$1,627.540.00%
2032$2,371.38100.00%
2033$3,416.1750.00%
8 more rows

What cryptography does Solana use? ›

Solana uses a 256-bit secure hash algorithm (SHA-256), a set of proprietary cryptographic functions that output a 256-bit value.

What proof does Solana use? ›

Solana's Proof of History consensus mechanism verifies the time elapsed between two events. It involves a sequence of computations performed by a cryptographically secure function. This function operates sequentially on a single-core processor, with each output as input for the next computation.

What is the native token of Solana? ›

The native token SOL is used for securing the network through staking and paying fees for transactions and smart contract executions. The token will also be used to vote in network governance in the future.

What key algorithm does Solana use? ›

Solana employs the Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA), an elliptical signature algorithm for cryptography. K2 is a fork of Solana, so messages can also be encrypted using Koii addresses!

What coding language is Solana built on? ›

Solana programs are typically written in the Rust language, but C/C++ are also supported. There are also various community driven efforts to enable writing on-chain programs using other languages, including: Python via Seahorse (that acts as a wrapper the Rust based Anchor framework)

What smart contracts does Solana use? ›

The Solana Program is the section that helps in creating smart contracts with C, C++, and Rust and deploying them on Solana blockchain. In the second step, users would have to develop decentralized apps with the support of client SDKs alongside JSON RPC API for using Solana programs.

Can I receive Solana on Coinbase? ›

Coinbase Wallet supports Ethereum, Solana, and all EVM-compatible networks in both the mobile app and browser extension.

Where can I mine Solana coins? ›

No, you cannot mine Solana in a traditional sense. Unlike Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies that can be mined, Solana uses a Proof-of-Stake mechanism that operates differently. But don't worry, you can still gain rewards on the Solana blockchain through staking.

Does Ethereum have a mempool? ›

On Ethereum, when a transaction is sent, before being added to a block, it resides in what is called a Mempool. To receive information about this transaction, the Mempool must be queried.

Is front running possible on Solana? ›

Profitable frontrunning is possible across DEX liquidity venues structures, not just AMMs. Solana's continuous block production and lack of an in-protocol mempool changes the default behavior and social dynamics of the chain.

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