Harmonic Fires Back in Solana’s Block Building Wars | Ben Coverston

Harmonic CEO Ben breaks down Solana’s block-building competition, AlpenGlow/MCP trade-offs, and pragmatic steps to scale markets while preserving decentralization and improving on‑chain market making.

Key Takeaways

Validators should run multiple concurrent block builders and offer bundles/private submissions to preserve competition, eliminate rate limits, and keep APIs open for apps.
AlpenGlow is in upstream client 4.1 and likely coming soon; MCP proposals remain vague—evaluate concrete specs for latency, consensus overhead, and censorship trade-offs.
Protocolizing single-scheduler or fee-ordering risks centralization and new MEV forms; prefer app-layer fixes (AMQs, prop AMMs) to preserve composability and decentralization.
Push more market-making logic on-chain: prop AMMs and routers enable instant execution and tighter spreads without copying CEX co‑location models.
Prioritize scaling (raise CU/compute limits, faster chains) to reduce congestion and future censorship pressure; solve bottlenecks pragmatically before addressing theoretical attacks.
Center protocol changes on feedback from apps, DEXs, perps, bots, and market-makers—user and application preferences should guide ordering and scheduling decisions.

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