In the world of High-Frequency Trading (HFT) on Solana, every microsecond counts. The difference between landing a transaction in the current block versus the next can mean the difference between a profitable trade and a failed one.
The Importance of Geolocation
One of the most critical factors in reducing latency is the physical distance between your trading server and the Solana validator nodes. Light travels at a finite speed, so minimizing the distance your data has to travel is paramount.
Custom Geyser Plugins
Standard RPC nodes can be slow to propagate account updates. By using custom Geyser plugins, we can stream account updates directly from the validator to our trading engine via gRPC, bypassing the overhead of the standard JSON-RPC interface.
Shred Propagation
To get the absolute fastest data, we tap directly into the shred stream—the raw data packets that validators share with each other. This allows us to see transactions before they are even fully processed into a block.
Conclusion
By combining co-location, custom Geyser plugins, and raw shred processing, AllenHark achieves sub-millisecond latency for our institutional clients.