Raw Shred Data Behavior
Understand packets, deshredding, duplicates, forks, and the metadata that raw Shredstream does not contain.
Data and coding shreds
Data shreds carry pieces of ledger entries. Coding shreds carry erasure-recovery data. Your receiver groups them by slot and erasure set, then reconstructs entries when enough pieces exist.
See Solana's Turbine documentation and the ledger shred module for protocol detail.
UDP behavior
Your client must expect:
- Duplicate packets
- Out-of-order packets
- Missing packets
- Incomplete shred sets
- Bursts that exceed average traffic
Move decoding off the socket read loop. Use bounded queues, increase socket buffers only after measurement, and publish drop counters.
Fork behavior
A raw observation can belong to a branch that loses the fork choice. Treat it as an early signal rather than final state. Expire abandoned slot state and confirm important outcomes through gRPC or RPC.
Metadata that does not exist yet
Raw shreds do not provide:
- Transaction success or error
- Program logs
- Pre and post balances
- Compute-unit consumption
- Processed, confirmed, or finalized commitment
- Server-side program or wallet filters
Use Shredstream vs Yellowstone gRPC to choose the correct interface.