Blockchain technology is a trustless, peer-to-peer, decentralized network of computers that verify transactions along a digital ledger.

The computers running the blockchain are called Validator Nodes. Their job is to validate transactions. On Solana, validators do this by voting on blocks. Blocks contain information about the previous block, as well as a series of new transactions that users seek to transmit.

This layman's explanation may miss some important aspects of the technology. More information can be found in Solana's documentation.

Solana has a very fast block time of 800 milliseconds. There are a too many blocks in February to fit into a single results table. So, I partition the data into periods of one hour.

Every hour, most transactions are votes.

There was an unusual drop in transactions on February 6 at 16:00 UTC.

So far in February, votes as a percentage of total hourly transactions have oscillated between 72 and 80%.

This block only included votes. I suppose there are times when no transactions are sent to the validators and all they do is vote.

This block has the lowest ratio of votes. I suspect the data may be inaccurate. In all my previous results the Total_tx_count equals the Nb_votes + nb_non_votes_tx.

Few people truly understand how blockchains work under the hood. This post seeks to explain the role of validator votes on Solana.

The validator nodes receive the new blocks, verifies their content, and issues a vote if everything is correct. Once enough validators have voted to achieve a majority, the block is added to the chain. SOL tokens are then sent to the validators to pay for their work.

Counting Votes

Methodology

For each block, I count the number of voting transactions and the number of non-voting transactions. I then aggregate the result into periods of one hour. Finally, I calculate the ratio of voting transactions per hour.

The period of observation is February 1 to 11, 2022.

Solana currently has 1,508 validators. ¹

Sources:

1. https://solana.com/validators

Result

Summary

• ~75% of transactions on Solana are validator votes. I am surprised it is this high.
• Some blocks only include voting transactions.
• On an hourly basis, the percentage of voting transactions varies between 72% and 80%.
• Solana blocks are 800 milliseconds and can include thousands of transactions.
• There are 1,508 validators on Solana.

Validators send votes to every block. A vote confirms the validator has verified the state of the blockchain and the acceptability of all new proposed transactions.