“Nuke Them From Orbit”: Yakovenko Condemns Solana Slot Laggers

Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has condemned the misdemeanors of a small group of network validators, calling to “nuke them from orbit” and bar the guilty parties from participating in protocol governance.

Corvus Labs’ Andrei Vacariu has highlighted DeFi Development Corporation as one of the network’s most flagrant laggers, a term used to describe validators who deliberately slow the chain in order to earn greater rewards.

The discussion comes as Solana presses on towards 200ms slot times, an ongoing upgrade designed to improve network scalability.

Yakovenko Takes Shots at Laggers

Despite all Solana’s efforts to increase bandwidth and reduce latency, certain validator operators remain content to slow the network for their own financial gain. By intentionally delaying slot times, validators are able to capture more transactions and earn greater yields.

Yakovenko, and several other network leaders, have previously decried the practice, arguing that it counterproductive to Solana’s goals and suggesting that stake pool operators blacklist transgressors. 

Repeating his 2025 call to “nuke them from orbit”, Toly has once again made his displeasure with slot laggers clear, suggesting perpetrators be banned from participating in network governance.

Numerous ecosystem leaders have since reinforced Yakovenko’s position, while some have suggested that social pressures and the “soft power” of the Solana Foundation could be used to discourage misbehaving operators. Others have suggested protocol-level technical solutions would be a stronger alternative, to which Yakovenko suggested setting a QOS standard that must be met for validators to qualify.

Who’s Slowing Down Solana?

Corvus Lab’s Andrei Vacariu argues that DeFi Development Corp, a Digital Asset Treasury company, and Temporal, a Research & Development firm, are among the biggest public culprits. 

Vacariu claims that Temporal-managed validators, including DFDV, are consistently delaying slots. Allegedly, these operators are also drained and rotated, but are believed to be linked to a larger cluster of Temporal-managed wallets.

Similarly, Vacariu asserts that DeFi Development Corp. is spinning up unnamed validators to continue the practice and avoid detection. 

The Corvus Labs’ researcher argues that the fact that these validators’ sole staker is the $dfdvSOL LST, which has had its stake multiplied via Jupiter Lend looping strategies. 

Vacariu has since asked the wider Solana community what his future investigative work should explore. According to a recent poll, network participants are most interested by private orderflow deals.

Solana Draws Closer to 200ms Slot Times

While slot laggers are deliberately slowing the network for financial gain, Solana continues its push towards faster slots and enhanced network scalability. After implementing the first slot time reduction in late August, the network has successfully completed the second reduction, bringing Solana’s slot time down to a target 300ms.

According to onchain data, the current per-minute average slot time is around 316ms, just shy of the 300ms target. 200ms remains the ultimate goal, which Anza expects to be realized over the course of two more implementations.

Additionally, Anza has announced that Transaction v1, an upgrade designed to raise max transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes, increasing the capacity for more complex onchain transactions.

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