Dynamic Colocation: Minimizing Network Latency Through Geographic Provisioning

Network latency is constrained by physics. Light travels at approximately 200,000 km/s through fiber optic cables. A round trip from Tokyo to Virginia adds roughly 150ms of irreducible latency, before any computation occurs. For real-time applications, this physical constraint matters as much as execution speed.

MagicBlock addresses this through dynamic colocation, the ability to provision Ephemeral Runtimes in geographic proximity to users, rather than routing all traffic through a single global endpoint. This article explains how colocation works, the infrastructure that enables it, and how applications leverage regional validators to minimize end-to-end latency.

The Latency Problem

End-to-end transaction latency consists of multiple components:

1. Network round-trip time (RTT): Time for data to travel from client to server and back
2. Execution time: Time to process the transaction
3. Consensus overhead: Time for validators to agree on state (in traditional blockchains)

For Ephemeral Rollups, consensus overhead is eliminated, as they operate as non-voting validators without coordination requirements. Execution time is minimized through First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) 3-5ms block times. This leaves network RTT as the dominant latency factor.

Consider the physical distances involved:

If an application routes all traffic to a single US-based endpoint, users in Asia experience 100-150ms of network latency on every transaction, before any processing begins. For a game sending transactions every 30ms, this makes real-time interactions impossible.

Regional Validator Infrastructure

MagicBlock operates Ephemeral Rollup validators across multiple geographic regions, such as:

Each validator handles an Ephemeral Rollup instance capable of:

• Cloning state from Solana via JIT State Cloning
• Executing transactions in real-time
• Committing state back to the Solana base layer

When delegating accounts, developers specify which validator should process their state:

// Delegate to Asia-Pacific validator for APAC users
ctx.accounts.delegate_pda(
    &ctx.accounts.payer,
    &[SEED],
    DelegateConfig {
        validator: "MAS1Dt9qreoRMQ14YQuhg8UTZMMzDdKhmkZMECCzk57", // Asia
        ..Default::default()
    },
)?;

Powerful, yet lightweight

The Ephemeral Validator is not only extremely performant but also lightweight. The containerized version weighs <50MB, small enough to deploy instantly and without significant infrastructure overhead.

As a result of this, ERs can achieve:

• Rapid provisioning: New validator instances spin up in seconds 
• Cost-effective deployment: Running validators doesn't require substantial infrastructure investment. Consumer hardware can validate transactions

Application example: Regional Game Matchmaking

Supersize.gg demonstrates how games leverage dynamic colocation for real-time multiplayer.

Supersize is a studio building fully onchain games where players compete for resources in real-time. The games send transactions for every player's movement input and require responses within 50ms for non-laggy gameplay. With a globally distributed player base, a single-region architecture would make the game unplayable for users far from the server.

Architecture

Supersize implements regional matchmaking by:

1. Detecting user location: Client-side geolocation determines the user's region
2. Selecting regional validator: Match rooms delegate state to the nearest ER validator
3. Regional session isolation: Players in the same region play together on the same ER instance

When a player in Tokyo joins Supersize:

• The client detects APAC region
• Matchmaking routes them to games running on devnet-as.magicblock.app
• Game state delegates to the Asia validator
• Transactions execute with ~30ms end-to-end latency

When a player in Berlin joins:

• The client detects EMEA region
• Matchmaking routes them to games on devnet-eu.magicblock.app
• Game state delegates to the Europe validator
• Same ~30ms latency for European players

Implementation mockup

// Simplified matchmaking logic
function selectValidator(userRegion: Region): ValidatorConfig {
  switch (userRegion) {
    case Region.APAC:
      return {
        endpoint: "devnet-as.magicblock.app",
        pubkey: "MAS1Dt9qreoRMQ14YQuhg8UTZMMzDdKhmkZMECCzk57"
      };
    case Region.EMEA:
      return {
        endpoint: "devnet-eu.magicblock.app",
        pubkey: "MEUGGrYPxKk17hCr7wpT6s8dtNokZj5U2L57vjYMS8e"
      };
    case Region.AMERICAS:
      return {
        endpoint: "devnet-us.magicblock.app",
        pubkey: "MUS3hc9TCw4cGC12vHNoYcCGzJG1txjgQLZWVoeNHNd"
      };
  }
}

// Create match room on regional validator
async function createMatchRoom(userRegion: Region) {
  const validator = selectValidator(userRegion);
  
  // Delegate game state to regional ER
  await delegateGameState(validator.pubkey);
  
  // Connect to regional endpoint for transactions
  const connection = new Connection(validator.endpoint);
  return connection;
}

Results

With this setup, Supersize achieves:

• ~30ms end-to-end latency for users near regional validators
• Elastic scaling: Multiple match rooms can run simultaneously on each regional validator
  

Trading applications & market hours

The same properties are beneficial to trading and DeFi applications, which exhibit different traffic patterns based on time and geography. Trading volume follows market opening hours, shifting across regions as markets open and close throughout the day.

Traffic Patterns

Consider a decentralized exchange and the following simplification of the users it serves:

Trading activity correlates with:

1. Market hours: Crypto markets are 24/7, but activity spikes during traditional market hours
2. Circadian cycles: Retail traders are most active during their local daytime
3. News events: Breaking news can trigger more activity in regions where a security’s primary listing and liquidity are concentrated. For example, Toyota’s shares trade far more on the Tokyo Stock Exchange than on NYSE, so price discovery tends to lead in Tokyo trading hours.
   

With MagicBlock, developers can build on Solana to tap into a unified liquidity layer, with assets spanning from tokenized stocks to memcoins, and opt in to Ephemeral Rollups for region-specific execution environments. A DEX can run dedicated instances optimized for specific markets (e.g., an Asia-focused pairs market with lower latency for Tokyo traders), or implement a rotating validator that follows market hours, and delegate execution to whichever regional validator is closest to the current peak-activity timezone.

State Synchronization Across Regions

A key consideration for apps is that the state delegated to one regional validator is not writable to other regions. Each ER instance maintains its own cloned state.

For applications requiring cross-region state visibility and composability, the app needs:

1. Commit and Undelegate to Solana: State diff must be committed to Solana 
2. Re-clone on demand: Other validators can clone the updated state after commits

A great property of this system is that every increment in Solana’s performance directly benefits the efficiency of moving delegations across ERs, since MagicBlock natively inherits the improvements. IBRL all the way!

Summary

Dynamic colocation addresses the physical constraints of network latency by provisioning execution environments close to users. 

The node operators can:

1. Run regional validators across regions, whether in Asia, Europe, US, or others
2. Use a lightweight containerized validator (<50MB) for cost-effective multi-region deployment
3. Enable applications to select validators based on user geography or traffic patterns
4. Provide consistent sub-50ms end-to-end latency regardless of user location

For real-time applications, like games requiring 30ms response times or trading systems competing on execution speed, colocation transforms what's architecturally possible onchain.


Implementation resources:

• Delegation, Commitment & Undelegation — validator selection during delegation
• Ephemeral Validator — open-source validator implementation
• Supersize Case Study — regional matchmaking in production

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