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Guide

How to check Solana network congestion

Add the Solana pulse widget. It reads recent priority fees from Solana RPC along with landed Jito tips and throughput, then puts one word on top: Calm, Busy or Congested. Calm means that in the median recent slot something landed with no priority fee, and even the 95th percentile stayed at or under 10,000 micro-lamports per compute unit. Congested means the median itself is above 10,000.

Step by step

  1. 1

    Add Solana pulse

    Press Ctrl K, type pulse and run Add Solana network pulse. It refreshes every 10 seconds, often enough to watch a launch rush build.

  2. 2

    Read the fee tiers

    Economy is the median fee of recent slots, Standard the 75th percentile, Fast the 95th, in the same unit as the 10,000 threshold above. A line over them shows the share of sampled slots where some transaction landed with no priority fee.

  3. 3

    Check Jito tips

    The Jito row shows the median, 95th and 99th percentile of landed bundle tips in lamports, plus a smoothed median. That is roughly what a bundle costs to land right now.

  4. 4

    Look at throughput and epoch

    Throughput gives total TPS, non-vote TPS and slots per second. The epoch tile shows progress in percent and about how many hours are left until rewards.

  5. 5

    Add Chain status

    For block height, block age and RPC latency next to other networks, add Chain status with Solana, Base and Ethereum.

Tips

  • Dollar costs on the tiers assume a 200,000 compute unit transaction plus the 5,000-lamport base fee. A heavier swap costs more.
  • A rising block age in Chain status can mean the public RPC is behind rather than the chain, so check both widgets before blaming the network.
  • Cashboard's own code never sends a transaction. Use the reading to set fees in the wallet or bot you already use. A swap you start on the web runs in Jupiter's form, and your own wallet signs it.

Widgets used

Terms in this guide

Frequently asked questions

What is a normal Solana priority fee?

There is no fixed number. When the network is calm, the median slot has transactions landing with no priority fee. During launch rushes the median priority fee can pass 10,000 micro-lamports for every compute unit, and that is where Cashboard switches the label to Congested.

Why are Solana fees shown in lamports instead of SOL?

Because SOL is too big a unit for them. One SOL is one billion lamports. Jito tips are counted in lamports and priority fees in micro-lamports, the units Solana itself uses.

Last reviewed . Market data in Cashboard comes from the providers named on each widget and may be delayed. Nothing here is financial advice.