Solana Slots Are Going to 200 ms: What Halves, What Shrinks

Originally published on xroot.dev. Solana's slot has been 400 milliseconds since genesis. The plan to halve it — SIMD-0525 — is usually explained as "blocks get faster", which is the least interesting thing it does. The interesting part is everything that was quietly denominated in slots because slots were a fixed unit of time, and now is not....