What Is SWQoS in Solana?
SWQoS (Stake-Weighted Quality of Service) is a Solana mechanism that allocates a portion of the leader’s TPU capacity to transactions forwarded by staked validators, proportional to their stake. This ensures that staked nodes get reliable transaction throughput even during network congestion.
How SWQoS works
The leader validator reserves roughly 80% of its TPU capacity for transactions arriving through QUIC connections from staked peers. The remaining 20% is shared among unstaked senders. A staked node with more stake gets a larger share of the reserved capacity.
This means transactions forwarded by an RPC node with staked connections have a significantly higher chance of reaching the leader during congestion than those sent from an unstaked client.
Staked connections
A “staked connection” is a QUIC connection from a node that has an active stake on the cluster. RPC providers offer staked connections as a premium feature — the provider runs a node with delegated stake and forwards your transactions through it.
Impact on developers
SWQoS does not affect transaction processing or priority fees. It only affects whether your transaction reaches the leader’s TPU queue. Once in the queue, priority fees determine execution order.
For applications that need reliable transaction delivery during congestion (trading bots, arbitrage), using an RPC provider with staked connections is more effective than increasing priority fees alone.
FAQ
Can I get SWQoS without running a validator? Yes. Use an RPC provider that offers staked connections. The provider’s stake is what matters, not yours.
Does SWQoS guarantee my transaction will land? No. SWQoS improves the chance of reaching the TPU queue, but the transaction can still fail due to insufficient priority fee, compute budget limits, or program errors.
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