FAQ - How to Start ERPC
Getting Started with Solana RPC / gRPC
You can easily begin using ERPC services via the official Validators DAO Discord. We provide free trial periods for all our plans, so feel free to test and experience our services.
Detailed Getting Started Guide on Discord
Detailed step-by-step instructions are available in the following Discord channel:
🔗 #▶️-how-to-start
Our support team is ready to assist you smoothly through your first steps, so please don’t hesitate to join!
Q. Why hasn't my free trial started yet?
If you’ve only completed the €1 card verification, your free trial has not yet begun. Please make sure to click the “Start Free Trial” button for the desired plan after card verification.
Q. Will I be charged immediately?
No, you won't be charged immediately. The €1 authorization is only to verify your card. All plans include a 7-day free trial. You will only be charged if you don't cancel the trial before it ends.
Q. What regions are supported?
We currently support the following regions:
- Amsterdam
- Frankfurt
- London
- New York
- Chicago
- Salt Lake City
- Tokyo
- Singapore
Sydney region is currently being prepared.
Q. What is the latency like?
Latency varies depending on the measurement method and your specific usage environment. Rather than focusing on exact numerical values, it's crucial to ensure that the latency meets your actual operational requirements.
We offer free trials across all our plans, enabling you to test performance directly in your real-world environment. Additionally, we provide easy-to-use tools in TypeScript and Rust for measuring latency. Feel free to utilize these tools alongside your free trial.
Q. I need latency of at least ~400ms or better.
To achieve latency within approximately 400ms, consider these essential points:
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Realistic Understanding of Ping Values: Ping values indicate ideal conditions and do not reflect actual latency in streaming communications, which typically experience around 5 times the ping latency. For example, a ping of 100ms across continents realistically results in about 500ms of latency. Thus, infrastructure must be established within the same region to achieve ~400ms latency.
- Typical Ping Value Reference:
- Same network: ~0.1ms
- Private Network Interconnect (PNI): ~0.2ms
- Same data center: ~0.3ms
- Same city: ~1ms
- Neighboring country: ~5–10ms
- Intercontinental: ~100–300ms
- Typical Ping Value Reference:
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Avoiding the Pitfall of Average Latency: Solana validators are geographically dispersed globally, and the leader schedule changes randomly with each epoch. Relying on average latency to achieve ~400ms is impractical. Instead, you should precisely track validator schedules in your specific region to identify slots with the lowest latency. To consistently achieve minimal latency, infrastructure across all relevant regions is required. Within the same region, data acquisition can occur in tens of milliseconds, with transmission possible in just a few milliseconds.
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Tracking the Leader Schedule: Continuously monitor the leader validator schedule for your region using tools such as the Solana Beach API or Solana RPC APIs (
getSlotLeadersandgetClusterNodes). This allows you to identify optimal trading slots effectively.
Q. How can I achieve zero-block (zero-slot) trading?
Successfully achieving zero-block (zero-slot) trading requires more sophisticated strategies, as follows:
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Identifying Opportunity Zones: Solana validators are distributed globally, and it's physically impossible to achieve optimal latency for every slot. Therefore, track validator leader schedules in the region where your infrastructure is located and identify your optimal opportunity zones. Deploying infrastructure across multiple regions can also be beneficial. Frankfurt, for example, is particularly popular due to its high concentration of validators, leading to more frequent leader selection and thus greater trading opportunities.
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Implementing Dedicated Nodes: If you struggle to compete, consider deploying dedicated nodes. Shared nodes experience latency due to traffic from other users, and thus are not recommended. Furthermore, placing your dedicated node within the same network as your application significantly reduces network latency and optimizes performance.
Q. Is this RPC (gRPC, Shreds) faster than others?
We encourage you to try our free trial and compare the performance against other services. If you find our service slower, please let us know the specific conditions and competitors you've compared it against via Discord. We will identify the cause and improve the speed further.
We continually work on improving latency based on customer feedback. If you seek the fastest possible endpoint, please share detailed information with us. Providing specific metrics and comparison conditions against competitors allows us to deliver superior performance. This feedback-driven approach has consistently enabled us to enhance our services.
Q. Why are dedicated endpoints faster?
Shared endpoints distribute resources among multiple customers, causing increased latency as traffic grows. Server resources have physical limitations, meaning there is a finite amount of processing they can handle. When many requests arrive simultaneously, they must be processed sequentially, reducing overall response speeds.
While we optimize performance with various measures for shared endpoints, dedicated endpoints ensure exclusive resource use by you alone, entirely eliminating interference from other users. Consequently, dedicated endpoints consistently deliver stable and faster response times.
Additionally, dedicated endpoints offer communication options without TLS, such as HTTP. By skipping the TLS handshake, communication speeds improve significantly compared to HTTPS.
Q. How many tokens are consumed per method?
A detailed token consumption table per method is currently being prepared. During the free trial period, you can freely test all methods and roughly determine the consumption.
The Pro plan is also available for a 7-day free trial. We encourage you to try it out.