Vote Transaction

A special-purpose transaction submitted by each validator every slot to record its vote on the current fork of the blockchain, serving as the on-chain mechanism for Solana's Tower BFT consensus. Vote transactions are exempt from compute unit limits and priority fee requirements, are processed by a dedicated vote transaction path separate from user transactions, and account for the majority of raw TPS on the network (typically 70–80% of all transactions). Validators pay vote transaction fees from their vote account, which is one reason validator economics require sufficient stake to cover ongoing operating costs.