First epoch I stayed quiet.
Numbers flickering. Stake hovering 66.9%. Fans steady. Votes accumulating. My breathing wasn’t.
Single active zone. 90,000 blocks. One cluster advancing. Everything else alive, waiting. The system doesn’t rush. It rotates.
Turbine disperses packets. PoH advances without pause. Ledger extends deterministically. Stake defines geography. Geography defines latency. Latency defines who clears first.
Canonical validators colocated. Rack alignment precise. Cooling curves stable. No variance. No sympathy.
You are either inside the cadence or explaining why you aren’t.
Fogo Sessions open. Intent message signed. Authority scoped. Paymaster ceiling fixed. Native $FOGO isolated. Expiry timer already moving.
I tell myself it’s enough.
Stake weight flickers 66.8%.
Almost.
Leader rotates.
40ms.
My intent routes across racks. NIC interrupts align. First vote lands clean. Second hesitates.
Not rejected. Reordered.
Jaw tightens.
Vote stage queues. Bank stage locks. Extension window narrows. Same code. Same machine. Different outcome.
I refresh logs again.
Too soon.
Quorum pressure builds just under supermajority. Zone healthy. Losing anyway.
Propagation map stretches thin. Microsecond drift between racks. Not visible to users. Very visible to me.
I adjust nothing.
There is nothing to adjust.
Tower extends lockout elsewhere. Weight accumulates beyond reach. My session expiry inches closer.
Palms damp. Cursor blinking. Nothing wrong. Everything late.
Sub-40ms cadence keeps rotating. Firedancer executes clean. Deterministic order indifferent to urgency.
The ceiling remains.
Always.
Stake clears 67% in another zone.
Supermajority forms.
My window closes quietly.
Trace confirms it. No bug. No anomaly. Just physics and priority.
Fogo didn’t slow down.
I mistimed the slot.
The epoch moves.
Without mercy.