Testnet Participation

In order to receive support through the SFDP, participants must first prove their ability to run a Solana validator successfully on testnet while meeting acceptable performance requirements (see Delegation Criteria) for at least 5 testnet epochs. Participants must also maintain their testnet node and keep acceptable performance in at least 5 of the last 10 epochs to continue receiving mainnet support and delegation.

Standard Priority Queue: Due to the large demand for the program there is a priority queue for onboarding from testnet onto mainnet. 25 Participants will be onboarded to mainnet each month. To better understand when a new participant will be onboarded please see FAQ: Onboarding Questions for more details.

Ecosystem Contributor Priority Queue (Experimental): With the new SFDP, the Solana Foundation is introducing an experimental priority queue for developers and ecosystem contributors. Individuals and teams who are already an active part of the Solana ecosystem have unique insight into the needs of the network. This cohort has aligned incentives when it comes to maximizing decentralization, reliability, and performance of the Solana network — making them ideal candidates for running a validator. This fully-separate queue does not affect the rate of onboarding for the standard queue.

Please fill out this form to be considered for the Ecosystem Contributor Priority Queue. For eligibility information and additional details please see the FAQ: Ecosystem Contributor Priority Queue.