Everyone quotes 40ms blocks. That’s the headline.
The real signal is what Fogo is optimizing after hitting that number.
40M+ testnet transactions isn’t vanity volume it’s stress. Enough load to surface propagation edge, RPC saturation, slot drift. And the response hasn’t been marketing. It’s been structural: deeper queue visibility, tighter leader windows, lower-level networking upgrades.
That’s not “faster blockchain” engineering.
That’s exchange microstructure thinking.
They’re clearly preparing for burst flow liquidations, CLOB surges, adversarial bots the kind of traffic that punishes weak coordination.
Here’s the uncomfortable shift:
When latency compresses this far, proximity starts to matter. Not capital. Not narratives. Physical and network positioning.
That’s how traditional venues evolved.
So the real question isn’t speed.
It’s fairness under speed.
If Fogo balances low latency with credible neutrality, it becomes more than an L1.
It becomes a venue capital respects.