Resources

A curated list of places to follow, read and ask. Links were checked on the date at the top of this page. If one has moved or died, please edit this page.

Note

Listing a project here isn’t an endorsement. Within each table, entries are grouped by type, not ranked.

Clients: docs and releases

Watch the releases pages of every client you run: GitHub’s “Watch → Custom → Releases” setting sends you an email for each release.

Client	Docs	Releases
Agave (Anza)	docs.anza.xyz/operations · requirements · compatibility policy	anza-xyz/agave
Jito-Solana (Agave fork)	Jito-Solana docs · Block Engine API	jito-foundation/jito-solana
Firedancer	docs.firedancer.io · release tags explained	firedancer-io/firedancer (tags; build from source)
FireBAM (Firedancer fork, for BAM)	setup guide	jito-foundation/firebam
Harmonic Salsa / Samba (Agave / Firedancer forks)	docs.harmonic.gg	harmonic/salsa · harmonic/samba

Block building:

• BAM, Jito’s block assembly marketplace: bam.dev · validator guide · docs · forum
• Harmonic: harmonic.gg · docs

Announcements and discussion

Where	What it’s for
Solana Tech Discord	The main operator community. The validator, testnet and announcement channels need a role, which you get through the server’s verification.
@SolanaStatus and status.solana.com	Cluster status, incidents and mandatory-upgrade announcements.
Firedancer Discord	Firedancer operators.
Jito Discord	Jito-Solana, BAM and FireBAM support.
Temporal / Harmonic Discord	Harmonic support.
Solana Developer Forum	Long-form discussion: SIMD and governance categories.
Solana Stack Exchange	Searchable Q&A.

Tip

There’s no mailing list for mandatory upgrades. They’re announced in the Discord announcement channels, on @SolanaStatus and in client release notes, so follow at least two of those.

Governance and protocol changes

• Solana Improvement Documents (SIMDs): every protocol change starts here.
  • Ideas start in Discussions and become draft pull requests.
  • From there a SIMD moves through Review, Accepted, Implemented and Activated (SIMD-0001).
  • Accepted SIMDs that change the runtime ship behind a feature gate.
• Feature Gate Tracker Schedule: which features are next to activate on each cluster, and the minimum software version each one needs. Check it before every activation window.
• Validator governance: stake-weighted on-chain votes on proposals. Delegators can override their validator’s vote with their own stake. Process and thresholds are in the FAQ, and the program and CLI in the technical docs and source.
• Solana Governance Proposals: non-technical governance proposals.
• Alpenglow specs: SIMD-0326 (Alpenglow) · SIMD-0384 (migration) · SIMD-0357 (validator admission ticket)

Dashboards and explorers

Tower-era metrics

Since Alpenglow (mainnet epoch 1064), votes are off-chain BLS messages and vote credits are gone. Some dashboards still show vote credits, vote distance or vote latency. Under Alpenglow those columns don’t reflect how a validator performs. Look for skip rate, rewards received versus expected, and admission status (BLS key and VAT) instead.

Validator rankings and explorers

• Solana Beach
• Solana Compass
• Stakewiz
• TopValidators
• validators.app
• Vortex
• Block explorers: Solana Explorer · Solscan

Cluster health

• Pumpkin’s Pool Watchtower: delinquency, admission (VAT) status and validators dropping out, with an Alpenglow view.
• Solana public metrics: where SOLANA_METRICS_CONFIG reports go.

Delegation programs and pools (see Getting stake)

• SFDP: overview · criteria · your status · dashboard
• Jito: StakeNet · Jito Explorer · BAM Explorer
• Marinade: PSR / stake auction dashboard · Explore

Monitoring tools

Tool	What it does
agave-watchtower	Delinquency and health alerts to Slack, Discord, Telegram or Twilio. Run it on a different machine from the validator.
agave-validator monitor	A live view of a running Agave node.
Agave metrics reporting	SOLANA_METRICS_CONFIG / InfluxDB reporting. Some delegation programs require it.
Firedancer monitoring	Built-in Prometheus endpoint, the monitor terminal UI and an optional browser GUI.
solana-exporter	Prometheus exporter for validator and cluster metrics, including Alpenglow vote-account data such as whether a BLS key is set. Pair it with Alertmanager.
Stakeconomy solanamonitoring	Telegraf collector and Grafana dashboard (hosted dashboard).

Opinion

Alert from somewhere other than the validator itself, and alert on “caught up but not voting” as well as “down”. Under Alpenglow, the most common failures (a BLS key mismatch, an underfunded vote account) leave the process running.

Testnet

• Cluster endpoints, entrypoints and genesis hashes (testnet RPC: https://api.testnet.solana.com)
• Solana faucet for testnet and devnet SOL
• validators.app testnet view
• BAM testnet endpoints
• Testnet channels in the Solana Tech Discord (need a role)