Solana has reduced its target slot time from 400 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds while maintaining a low and broadly stable skipped-slot rate. The change shortened stall time from consecutive skipped slots to approximately 1,200-1,400 milliseconds and reduced P99 latency for the maximum continuous leader duration from roughly three seconds to two seconds. A Solana Foundation study published Sept. 28 found that voting became slower as slot targets shortened, with the largest increases among nodes in Asia and South America, although network-average vote latency remained below two slots and the study found no evidence of consensus instability. The study also found a distributional gap in vote-credit losses at 250 milliseconds: validators counted equally lost 1.6360% of vote credits, compared with 0.0874% when weighted by stake. Because vote credits help determine inflationary rewards for validators and delegators, the finding makes a potential move to 200 milliseconds an economic question as well as a performance question. The figures do not represent individual SOL losses, and the study does not establish that shorter slots caused the disparity. Small samples for certain Asia-to-Oceania and Europe-to-Oceania leader handoffs also prevented the Foundation from ruling out statistical noise in regional skip patterns. The Foundation treats 200 milliseconds as a possible next target, while noting that the planned Alpenglow design would change the voting mechanism by sending votes directly between validators and collecting proof of voting within eight slots.