Solana has faced a spike in median block times, causing a slowdown in transaction processing, particularly driven by validators aiming to maximize their yields by delaying block production. By waiting longer, validators can collect a larger number of transaction fees. Despite Solana's goal of quick block times, this behavior has resulted in increased epoch lengths and fewer opportunities for stakers to earn rewards. Validators, including those from Jito, are attempting to address this by drafting governance proposals to penalize slow producers, while others like Marinade and Anza are proposing technical solutions to manage the grace tick periods and enhance performance. Firedancer is also being looked at for potential improvements. The community is concerned about the trend of slow blocks, indicating that some validators are facing blacklisting. The upcoming Alpenglow proposal aims to enable skip votes that should help resolve the issue.

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