Solana’s 300ms speed boost to outrun trading bots might come with a hidden cost

Solana’s shorter trading intervals could let liquidity providers keep more of the value that trading bots extract from outdated pool prices. Fee-charging pools whose prices lag external markets have the clearest modeled benefit.Solana’s mainnet has reached the reported 300-millisecond slot target, shortening the intervals allocated for block production. Validator software developer Anza also issued its Sept. 8 call for volunteers to adopt Agave v4.3.These separate upgrades change both trading opportunities and the costs of running the network.The economic question is how much trading value remains with the people supplying liquidity after faster execution, fees, and competition between bots. A larger transaction count cannot answer it.Faster price updates benefit pools differentlyAn automated market maker (AMM) lets traders swap against a pool of assets. When an external market price moves before the pool updates, an arbitrageur can trade against the outdated price. The bot captures the difference, and the pool’s liquidity providers bear the cost of that informational disadvantage.The Solana Foundation’s August analysis applies this model to constant-product pools, a conventional A...