Glossary OS

Plain meaning

Start with the shortest useful explanation before going deeper.

The component within Solana's TPU pipeline responsible for ordering transactions from the banking stage's queues, acquiring account read/write locks, and dispatching transactions to worker threads for execution. The scheduler enforces account conflict serialization (ensuring write-locked accounts are processed by only one thread at a time) while maximizing parallelism across non-conflicting transactions. Solana has iterated on scheduler designs (including the central scheduler introduced in 2024) to improve throughput and reduce lock contention under load.

Mental model

Use the quick analogy first so the term is easier to reason about when you meet it in code, docs, or prompts.

Think of it as a building block that connects one definition to the larger Solana system around it.

Technical context

Place the term inside its Solana layer so the definition is easier to reason about.

Clusters, nodes, MEV actors, routing, and operating environments.

Why builders care

Turn the term from vocabulary into something operational for product and engineering work.

This term unlocks adjacent concepts quickly, so it works best when you treat it as a junction instead of an isolated definition.

AI handoff

Use this compact block when you want to give an agent or assistant grounded context without dumping the entire page.

Scheduler (scheduler)
Category: Network
Definition: The component within Solana's TPU pipeline responsible for ordering transactions from the banking stage's queues, acquiring account read/write locks, and dispatching transactions to worker threads for execution. The scheduler enforces account conflict serialization (ensuring write-locked accounts are processed by only one thread at a time) while maximizing parallelism across non-conflicting transactions. Solana has iterated on scheduler designs (including the central scheduler introduced in 2024) to improve throughput and reduce lock contention under load.
Related: TPU (Transaction Processing Unit), Parallel Transaction Execution

Glossary Copilot

Ask grounded Solana questions without leaving the glossary.

Use glossary context, relationships, mental models, and builder paths to get structured answers instead of generic chat output.

Open full Copilot workspace

Question

Explain this code

Optional: paste Anchor, Solana, or Rust code so the Copilot can map primitives back to glossary terms.

Ask a glossary-grounded question

The Copilot will answer using the current term, related concepts, mental models, and the surrounding glossary graph.

Concept graph

See the term as part of a network, not a dead-end definition.

These branches show which concepts this term touches directly and what sits one layer beyond them.

Branch

TPU (Transaction Processing Unit)

Transaction Processing Unit—the pipeline within a leader validator that ingests, verifies, and executes transactions. The TPU has stages: fetch (receive packets via QUIC), sigverify (verify Ed25519 signatures), banking (execute against current bank state), and broadcast (shred and send via Turbine). Non-leader validators forward transactions to the current leader's TPU.

TVU (Transaction Validation Unit)Transaction

Open term

Branch

Parallel Transaction Execution

Solana's ability to process multiple transactions simultaneously by analyzing their account access lists and executing non-conflicting transactions in parallel across CPU cores via the Sealevel runtime. Two transactions can run in parallel only if they do not share any writable accounts; transactions sharing a writable account are serialized. This design allows Solana to fully exploit modern multi-core hardware and is a primary contributor to its high throughput.

Sealevel TPS (Transactions Per Second)

Open term

Next concepts to explore

Keep the learning chain moving instead of stopping at one definition.

These are the next concepts worth opening if you want this term to make more sense inside a real Solana workflow.

Core Protocol

TPU (Transaction Processing Unit)

Transaction Processing Unit—the pipeline within a leader validator that ingests, verifies, and executes transactions. The TPU has stages: fetch (receive packets via QUIC), sigverify (verify Ed25519 signatures), banking (execute against current bank state), and broadcast (shred and send via Turbine). Non-leader validators forward transactions to the current leader's TPU.

Open term

Network

Parallel Transaction Execution

Solana's ability to process multiple transactions simultaneously by analyzing their account access lists and executing non-conflicting transactions in parallel across CPU cores via the Sealevel runtime. Two transactions can run in parallel only if they do not share any writable accounts; transactions sharing a writable account are serialized. This design allows Solana to fully exploit modern multi-core hardware and is a primary contributor to its high throughput.

Open term

Network

Searcher (MEV)

An MEV actor that monitors on-chain state and pending transactions to identify profitable opportunities such as arbitrage, liquidations, or backruns, and submits transaction bundles through Jito's Block Engine to capture that value. Searchers compete on speed and strategy, paying tips to validators for bundle inclusion priority. Searcher operations range from beneficial (keeping markets efficient through arbitrage) to extractive (sandwich attacks that harm regular users).

Open term

Network

QUIC Protocol

The UDP-based transport protocol adopted by Solana as its primary transaction submission protocol, replacing raw UDP to provide congestion control, multiplexed streams, and connection-level flow control without TCP's head-of-line blocking. Solana's TPU (Transaction Processing Unit) accepts client transactions over QUIC, allowing the leader to apply back-pressure and drop connections from misbehaving senders. QUIC integration with SWQoS allows leaders to enforce stake-weighted bandwidth limits at the transport layer.

Open term

Commonly confused with

Terms nearby in vocabulary, acronym, or conceptual neighborhood.

These entries are easy to mix up when you are reading quickly, prompting an LLM, or onboarding into a new layer of Solana.

Networkslashing

Slashing

The punitive reduction of a validator's stake as a penalty for provable misbehavior such as double-signing or equivocation — confirming two conflicting blocks at the same slot. As of 2025, Solana does not yet enforce automatic on-chain slashing (unlike Ethereum), though it is a planned addition to the protocol; the primary deterrents currently are social consensus, stake withdrawal by delegators, and future slashing implementation. The lack of slashing means Solana validators face lower direct financial risk from bugs but also reduced cryptographic accountability compared to slashing-enabled networks.

Open term

Related terms

Follow the concepts that give this term its actual context.

Glossary entries become useful when they are connected. These links are the shortest path to adjacent ideas.

Core Protocoltpu

TPU (Transaction Processing Unit)

Transaction Processing Unit—the pipeline within a leader validator that ingests, verifies, and executes transactions. The TPU has stages: fetch (receive packets via QUIC), sigverify (verify Ed25519 signatures), banking (execute against current bank state), and broadcast (shred and send via Turbine). Non-leader validators forward transactions to the current leader's TPU.

Open term

Networkparallel-execution

Parallel Transaction Execution

Solana's ability to process multiple transactions simultaneously by analyzing their account access lists and executing non-conflicting transactions in parallel across CPU cores via the Sealevel runtime. Two transactions can run in parallel only if they do not share any writable accounts; transactions sharing a writable account are serialized. This design allows Solana to fully exploit modern multi-core hardware and is a primary contributor to its high throughput.

Open term

Stay in the same layer and keep building context.

These entries live beside the current term and help the page feel like part of a larger knowledge graph instead of a dead end.

Network

Mainnet Beta

Solana's primary production cluster where real SOL and real economic activity occur; the "beta" designation reflects the network's ongoing protocol development despite being fully live since March 2020. It uses the same architecture as other clusters but with real validator stakes, live staking rewards, and permanent on-chain state. All production dApps, tokens, and NFTs exist on Mainnet Beta.

Open term

Network

Devnet

A persistent public Solana cluster intended for application development and testing, running the same software version as Mainnet Beta but with no real economic value. Devnet SOL can be freely airdropped via the CLI or faucet APIs, and the ledger may be reset periodically by Solana Labs. Developers use Devnet to test programs and integrations before deploying to Mainnet Beta.

Open term

Network

Testnet

A public Solana cluster used primarily by the Solana core team and validators to test new software releases, performance benchmarks, and network upgrades under real network conditions before they reach Mainnet Beta. Testnet SOL has no monetary value, and the ledger is reset more frequently than Devnet; it is less suitable for application development and more suited for validator operators validating their infrastructure.

Open term

Network

TPS (Transactions Per Second)

The rate at which a Solana cluster processes and commits transactions; Solana's theoretical maximum exceeds 65,000 TPS due to its parallel execution model, though real-world sustained throughput on Mainnet Beta typically ranges from 2,000–5,000 non-vote TPS under normal load. Vote transactions (used for consensus) make up a significant portion of all on-chain activity and are counted separately. High TPS is enabled by Proof of History timestamps, Sealevel parallel execution, and Gulf Stream mempool-less forwarding.

Open term