The State of the Network: Anza

Solana has achieved what many thought impossible in blockchain: nearly two years of uninterrupted uptime while processing over 200 billion transactions. At Breakpoint 2025, Brennan Watt from Anza unveiled the engineering achievements behind this reliability—and outlined a roadmap that promises to transform Solana's market structure entirely.

Summary

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Anza, the team behind the Agave validator client that powers most of Solana's network, delivered a comprehensive state-of-the-network address highlighting three core themes: resiliency, performance, and a new focus on market structure optimization.

The numbers speak for themselves: Solana has maintained consistent uptime for almost two years straight, successfully handling massive economic events like the Trump coin launch without breaking a sweat. While major cloud infrastructure providers like AWS and Cloudflare experienced outages in 2025, Solana kept processing transactions without interruption.

Performance improvements have been equally dramatic. Transaction throughput has increased by 25% this year, with capacity for the most popular trading accounts doubled. The upcoming XDP networking upgrade promises a staggering 200x improvement in network layer performance by bypassing the Linux kernel entirely. Combined with the new Alpenglow consensus mechanism targeting 150-millisecond transaction finality, Solana is positioning itself as the undisputed leader in blockchain speed.

Perhaps most significant for the ecosystem's future is Anza's commitment to improving market structure. Multiple concurrent proposers (MCP) will end the single builder monopoly, while dramatic rent reductions—potentially dropping "a zero or two" from state storage costs—will make building on Solana significantly more affordable.

Key Points:

Resiliency and Uptime Excellence

Solana's reliability has reached a level of maturity that makes major economic events "boring" from an engineering perspective—and that's exactly what Anza wants. The network weathered the October 10th event and the Trump coin launch without issues, demonstrating the robustness of both the Agave client and the broader ecosystem.

Behind this stability lies an intensive testing regimen. The Invalidator team at Anza attacks testnet every hour with specialized tests falling into two categories: network denial-of-service attacks that stress backpressure handling and load shedding, and curated blocks designed to push the Solana Virtual Machine to its limits. The team explicitly models what well-capitalized, malicious actors could do to the network and builds defenses accordingly. Tests that once knocked the network offline now "barely register."

XDP: Bypassing the Linux Kernel for 200x Speed Gains

One of the most technically impressive announcements concerns XDP (eXpress Data Path) integration, which allows Agave to bypass the Linux kernel at the network layer. The rationale is simple: the Agave client is now too fast to wait for standard kernel operations like data copying and thread switching.

The performance difference is so dramatic that presentation charts required a logarithmic scale to display both the legacy and new code performance on the same graph. This improvement addresses the primary network bottleneck and will enable the next major throughput increase, which will double overall capacity to 100 million compute units per block. Validators are encouraged to enable XDP immediately to unlock this additional block space.

Alpenglow: Sub-150ms Transaction Finality

Alpenglow represents a complete replacement of Solana's existing Tower BFT consensus mechanism. First announced at Accelerate in mid-2025, the new consensus engine targets transaction finality times of 150 milliseconds or less—fast enough that users will actually feel the difference in application responsiveness.

The development progress has been remarkable. A 50-node, globally distributed test cluster has been running under load for over four months with so few problems that engineers had to verify the systems were actually running. The team is working toward feature completion by year-end, with testnet deployment planned for early 2026. Beyond speed, Alpenglow provides enhanced safety through tighter timing controls and improved handling of equivocation attacks.

Multiple Concurrent Proposers (MCP)

Anza's most ambitious market structure change involves ending the "single builder monopoly" through multiple concurrent proposers. MCP addresses several community concerns simultaneously: users and decentralized applications want optionality and reduced regional network latency impacts, while traders demand confidence in fair competition, censorship resistance, and transaction hiding properties.

Rather than delivering MCP as a single massive upgrade, Anza will ship features incrementally with each release throughout the coming year, progressively moving toward the ideal end state. This approach reflects Solana's development philosophy of translating ambitious ideas into shippable code quickly and safely.

Dramatic Rent Reductions

Responding to community feedback that "the rent is too damn high," Anza announced plans to dramatically reduce the cost of state storage on the blockchain. This isn't a minor adjustment—the team is targeting removal of "a zero, maybe two" from current prices.

The reduction will make it significantly more affordable for projects to bootstrap large user bases and create numerous accounts. Importantly, the new system includes an on-chain mechanism to adjust costs in response to changing conditions, providing flexibility for future optimization. This change directly supports Anza's commitment to making Solana the best platform for builders.

In-Protocol Revenue Sharing

The final major announcement concerns validator economics. Anza is building in-protocol mechanisms for validators to share revenue from various sources with stakers and information providers. Since delegated stake directly increases a validator's block-building opportunities, it's essential that stakers have a protocol-level way to participate in resulting rewards as trading activity on Solana increases.

Facts + Figures

• Solana has maintained nearly two years of continuous uptime without major outages
• The network has processed over 200 billion transactions during this period
• Transaction throughput increased by 25% in 2025
• Compute units for the hottest accounts doubled from 12 million to 24 million
• The next throughput upgrade will double overall capacity to 100 million compute units per block
• XDP integration delivers 200x improvement in network layer performance
• Mainnet sustained over 100,000 TPS during peak periods
• Alpenglow targets transaction finality of 150 milliseconds or less
• A 50-node globally distributed Alpenglow test cluster has run for over 4 months
• Alpenglow aims for feature completion by end of 2025 and testnet deployment in early 2026
• Rent costs are targeted to drop by "a zero, maybe two" from current levels
• Quarterly releases have continued shipping "like clockwork" throughout the year
• The Invalidator team attacks testnet with unique tests every hour

Top Quotes

"At Anza, one of the things that gets us really excited is keeping those big economic event days super boring. October 10th was a lot of things, but from an engineering perspective, it was super boring. And I think that's a giant W for this community."

"We've seen giants like AWS and Cloudflare have issues this year that have brought businesses to their knees. And meanwhile, while this is going on, Solana has just kept humming along."

"Agave is too fast to be waiting around to copy data or waiting for threads to switch out."

"We've had so few problems in fact that I've had to log into these machines and make sure that something's actually running because we're just having not that many problems."

"The rent is too damn high. And we are lowering the cost of state on the blockchain."

"We're not talking about some modest decrease. We're going to drop a zero from the price. Maybe two."

"We are ending the single builder monopoly."

"Solana showed everyone that blockchains can be fast and affordable. And now Anza and the core devs are going to show that they can be fair and highly efficient while remaining trustless."

"A single global unified state machine synchronizing at the speed of light and facilitating the premier trading experience for any asset. This is the future state of the network."

Questions Answered

How long has Solana maintained continuous uptime?

Solana has achieved nearly two years of continuous uptime, shown as "solid green" on network status monitors. During this period, the network processed over 200 billion transactions, a number that Brennan Watt noted exceeds any other blockchain network. This reliability record persisted even through major stress events like the Trump coin launch and the October 10th economic event, both of which the network handled without issues.

What is XDP and why does it matter for Solana performance?

XDP (eXpress Data Path) is a technology that allows the Agave validator client to bypass the Linux kernel at the network layer, eliminating delays from data copying and thread switching. This is critical because the Agave client has become so fast that standard kernel operations create bottlenecks. The improvement delivers 200x faster performance at the network layer, which will enable doubling overall block capacity to 100 million compute units. The performance difference is so dramatic that charts comparing old and new code required logarithmic scaling to display both results visibly.

What is Alpenglow and when will it launch?

Alpenglow is Solana's next-generation consensus mechanism designed to replace Tower BFT. It targets transaction finality times of 150 milliseconds or less—fast enough that users will perceive the difference in application responsiveness. The system has been running on a 50-node globally distributed test cluster for over four months with minimal issues. The team is working toward feature completion by the end of 2025, with testnet deployment planned for early 2026. Beyond speed improvements, Alpenglow provides enhanced safety through better timing controls and equivocation handling.

How will Solana address concerns about state storage costs?

Anza is implementing dramatic reductions to rent costs, potentially removing "a zero or two" from current prices. This responds directly to community feedback that storage costs were prohibitively high. The reduction will make it more affordable for projects to create large numbers of user accounts during bootstrapping phases. Additionally, the new system includes on-chain mechanisms to adjust costs based on environmental factors, providing flexibility for future optimization while maintaining economic sustainability.

What is MCP and how will it change Solana's market structure?

Multiple Concurrent Proposers (MCP) will end what Anza calls the "single builder monopoly" by allowing multiple validators to propose blocks simultaneously. This addresses several community concerns: users get more optionality and reduced regional latency impacts, while traders gain confidence in fair competition, censorship resistance, and transaction privacy properties. Rather than launching as a single major upgrade, MCP features will ship incrementally with each release throughout the coming year, gradually moving toward the ideal end state.

How does Anza test network resilience?

Anza's Invalidator team attacks Solana testnet with unique tests every hour, falling into two main categories. The first involves network denial-of-service attacks that stress backpressure handling and load shedding capabilities. The second involves crafting curated blocks designed to stress edge cases in the Solana Virtual Machine and replay execution. The team specifically models what well-capitalized, sophisticated attackers—both malicious validators and skilled users—could potentially do to break the network, then builds defenses against these scenarios.

How will validators be able to share revenue with stakers?

Anza is building in-protocol mechanisms for validators to share revenue from various sources with stakers and information providers. This is important because delegated stake directly increases the number of blocks a validator can build. As trading activity on Solana increases, having a protocol-level revenue sharing system ensures that stakers can participate fairly in the rewards generated by the network activity their stake enables.