OGGlossary OSSolana vocabulary rebuilt for builders.
ENPT-BRES
Network

Vote Transaction

A special-purpose transaction submitted by each validator every slot to record its vote on the current fork of the blockchain, serving as the on-chain mechanism for Solana's Tower BFT consensus. Vote transactions are exempt from compute unit limits and priority fee requirements, are processed by a dedicated vote transaction path separate from user transactions, and account for the majority of raw TPS on the network (typically 70–80% of all transactions). Validators pay vote transaction fees from their vote account, which is one reason validator economics require sufficient stake to cover ongoing operating costs.

IDvote-transaction
Plain meaning

Plain meaning

Start with the shortest useful explanation before going deeper.

A special-purpose transaction submitted by each validator every slot to record its vote on the current fork of the blockchain, serving as the on-chain mechanism for Solana's Tower BFT consensus. Vote transactions are exempt from compute unit limits and priority fee requirements, are processed by a dedicated vote transaction path separate from user transactions, and account for the majority of raw TPS on the network (typically 70–80% of all transactions). Validators pay vote transaction fees from their vote account, which is one reason validator economics require sufficient stake to cover ongoing operating costs.

Mental model

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

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

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

AI handoff

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

Vote Transaction (vote-transaction)
Category: Network
Definition: A special-purpose transaction submitted by each validator every slot to record its vote on the current fork of the blockchain, serving as the on-chain mechanism for Solana's Tower BFT consensus. Vote transactions are exempt from compute unit limits and priority fee requirements, are processed by a dedicated vote transaction path separate from user transactions, and account for the majority of raw TPS on the network (typically 70–80% of all transactions). Validators pay vote transaction fees from their vote account, which is one reason validator economics require sufficient stake to cover ongoing operating costs.
Related: Vote Account, Validator, Transaction Fee
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
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

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

Vote Account

An on-chain account that records a validator's Tower BFT votes and tracks their voting history. Each validator has one vote account that stores the last 32 vote slots with their confirmation counts. The vote account also tracks earned credits used to calculate epoch rewards. Vote transactions constitute ~70-80% of all transactions on Solana.

Tower BFT
Open term
Branch

Validator

A node that participates in the Solana network by validating transactions, voting on blocks, and (when selected as leader) producing new blocks. Validators run the Agave, Firedancer, or Jito client software, require significant hardware (128+ GB RAM, high-core CPU, NVMe SSD), and earn rewards from inflation and transaction fees.

StakeLeader Schedule
Open term
Branch

Transaction Fee

The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

Base FeePriority Fee
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

Vote Account

An on-chain account that records a validator's Tower BFT votes and tracks their voting history. Each validator has one vote account that stores the last 32 vote slots with their confirmation counts. The vote account also tracks earned credits used to calculate epoch rewards. Vote transactions constitute ~70-80% of all transactions on Solana.

Open term
Core Protocol

Validator

A node that participates in the Solana network by validating transactions, voting on blocks, and (when selected as leader) producing new blocks. Validators run the Agave, Firedancer, or Jito client software, require significant hardware (128+ GB RAM, high-core CPU, NVMe SSD), and earn rewards from inflation and transaction fees.

Open term
Network

Transaction Fee

The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

Open term
Network

Warmup Period

The number of epochs after stake delegation during which the delegated SOL progressively becomes active and eligible for earning rewards. During warmup, the stake gradually increases its effective weight over one or more epoch boundaries rather than activating instantly, preventing sudden large stake shifts that could destabilize the leader schedule and consensus.

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.

Networkvote-credit

Vote Credit

A reward tally credited to a validator's vote account each time one of its votes reaches the root (becomes finalized). Vote credits accumulate throughout an epoch and are used at epoch boundaries to calculate staking rewards — validators with more credits earn proportionally more rewards for themselves and their delegators. Credits incentivize consistent, timely voting.

Open term
Networkprivate-transaction

Private Transaction

A transaction sent directly to the current block producer or through a private relay rather than being broadcast through public RPC nodes, reducing the window for MEV searchers to observe and exploit it before inclusion. On Solana, private transactions can be routed through Jito's Block Engine or via staked connections with direct TPU access. While no transaction is truly private on a public blockchain once confirmed, private submission minimizes the pre-inclusion observation window.

Open term
Networktransaction-fee

Transaction Fee

The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

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 Protocolvote-account

Vote Account

An on-chain account that records a validator's Tower BFT votes and tracks their voting history. Each validator has one vote account that stores the last 32 vote slots with their confirmation counts. The vote account also tracks earned credits used to calculate epoch rewards. Vote transactions constitute ~70-80% of all transactions on Solana.

Open term
Core Protocolvalidator

Validator

A node that participates in the Solana network by validating transactions, voting on blocks, and (when selected as leader) producing new blocks. Validators run the Agave, Firedancer, or Jito client software, require significant hardware (128+ GB RAM, high-core CPU, NVMe SSD), and earn rewards from inflation and transaction fees.

Open term
Networktransaction-fee

Transaction Fee

The total SOL cost to submit a transaction on Solana, composed of the base fee (5,000 lamports per signature) plus any optional priority fee (compute unit price × compute units consumed). Unlike Ethereum, Solana fees are not purely dynamic gas auctions — the base fee is fixed and priority fees are additive. Fees are deducted from the fee-payer account before execution; if the account lacks sufficient SOL, the transaction fails.

Open term
More in category

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