Solana Tech Roundup

This past week the Solana StackExchange entered public beta. If you haven't created an account already, come check it out. A validator client written in C by Jump Crypto named Firedancer was announced. This second validator client for Solana is exciting and brings a whole set of new capabilities. A collaborative Developer Experience Board was created this past week in an effort for the community to improve building on Solana. If you have issues or a recommendation on something that would make Solana easier, please add an issue to the board.

Proposal Highlight

Scrambled Transactions

Documentation

The proposal for scrambled transactions takes an aim at making MEV economically unviable. Scrambled transactions introduces a 2-step process to reveal transaction information to keep leaders on the network from knowing incoming transactions while packing a new block. The cost of scrambling creates a small latency increase network-wide as well as an additional step in consensus.

This proposal is still being drafted and has not been accepted nor implemented. If you're interested in adding to the proposal, join the discussion!

Commit Highlights

• Explorer: Display address lookup table instruction

Address lookup tables now have a nice view on the explorer. Checkout out the new address lookup table details page.

• Require --bypass-warning to close program accounts

Program accounts cannot be accidentally close anymore with solana program close. You are required to pass an extra flag in order to bypass the warning that keeps you from auto-closing program accounts.

List of Changes

August 12

• If RPC service fails to start, handle error gracefully
• Allow overriding of runtime transaction account lock limit
  • Using --transaction-account-lock-limit in the solana-test-validator you can change the limit from 64
• Explorer: Display address lookup table instruction
• Adjust max coding shreds per slot
  • Changed to 557,056
• Reduce QUIC multi write test packet count
  • Reduced from 4000 to 3000

August 13

• Require --bypass-warning to close program accounts
  • It was too easy to close program accounts in the past. This adds an additional check so you don't accidentally destroy a program

August 14

• Web3.js: Add getAddressLookupTable to Connection
• Explorer: Add details page for address lookup table accounts

August 15

• Add more sysvar API docs
• Restructure core docs navbar and sidebar

August 16

• Add parsing for confidential transaction instructions

August 17

• Snapshot: Serialize version first so we can no what deserialization to do on the snapshot
• Fix args after -- in build-bpf and test-bpf

August 18

• Verify snapshot slot deltas
• Verify snapshot bank must always specify snapshot slot
• CLI: Add subcommands for address lookup tables
  • You can now use solana address-lookup-table get to visualize address lookup tables via the CLI