QUIC in Solana nodes

Introduction

Solana is a blockchain platform that is known for its speed and low fees. However, it has faced stability issues caused by spamming, which caused the Solana network to go down for hours at a time. To combat this issue, Solana has adopted the QUIC protocol.

Do Chainstack Solana nodes support QUIC?

Yes, in the release 0.10.32, QUIC has been enabled by default for all servers and routing. The flag--tpu-disable-quiccan be used to disable QUIC in Solana nodes, by default it's set to false. 

What is QUIC

QUIC stands for Quick UDP Internet Connections. To propagate information about the transactions and loop all nodes in the network in on the current state of the network, Solana has a custom protocol. It is based on the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), an alternative to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). 

QUIC works with multiplexed connections, making it so that multiple transmissions require only one channel to be open at certain time intervals. This way, if one of the transmissions fails or gets delayed, it would not affect the other messages, and there is a way to limit connections. With this protocol, it is easier to shut down connections if a sender starts spamming. Previously spam attacks brought the entire Solana network down to a halt.

Conclusion

By switching to QUIC, Solana can mitigate most “IP spoofing” while not sacrificing much speed. In the bigger picture, QUIC will open up more ways to further improve the stability of data transfers across the Solana network.

Feel free to contact Chainstack Support with any questions by emailing support@chainstack.com or submitting this form.