Epoch Boundary
Core Protocol · Deep
The transition point between two consecutive epochs at every 432,000th slot, during which the runtime performs critical state transitions: the leader schedule for the next epoch is computed from current stake weights, pending stake activations and deactivations take effect, inflation rewards are credited to validators and delegators, and the vote-credit-based reward distribution is finalized. Epoch boundaries are computationally expensive and can cause brief increases in slot times as the leader processes these one-time operations.