Use cases & limitations

ShredStream is a specialized raw-data transport. Use it when early packet access justifies building and operating a UDP shred-processing pipeline.

Appropriate uses

Feeding a custom block or entry reconstruction pipeline.
Producing early signals for systems that independently verify results through RPC or gRPC.
Monitoring shred arrival, gaps, duplicates, and propagation behavior.
Supplying an existing Solana component that already accepts raw UDP shreds.

Choose the right interface

Interface	What it provides	Best fit
ShredStream	Raw, pre-confirmation UDP shreds	Custom latency-sensitive pipelines that can process Solana shreds
Yellowstone gRPC	Parsed, filterable account, transaction, slot, and block updates	Most real-time application and indexing workloads
JSON-RPC	Request/response access with commitment controls	State reads, transaction lookup, confirmation, and finality checks

Operational limitations

There are no server-side account, program, transaction, or instruction filters.
UDP does not guarantee delivery, ordering, uniqueness, or replay.
Raw shreds require Solana-specific reconstruction and parsing before they become useful transactions or entries.
The feed can be high volume; consumers need adequate receive buffers, processing capacity, and backpressure handling.
The dashboard controls live delivery only. It does not provide historical shreds after a destination was disabled or unavailable.

Confirmation and trading safety

Shreds are observed before normal commitment and confirmation workflows complete. Forks, dropped transactions, missing packets, and later ordering can make an early observation differ from the eventual chain state.

Not a fit

Applications that expect parsed JSON or a stable transaction API should use RPC or gRPC.
Account-state consumers should use Yellowstone account subscriptions or RPC state methods.
Applications that cannot tolerate duplicate, missing, or out-of-order events should not consume raw UDP shreds directly.
Workloads without a measured pre-confirmation latency requirement usually gain little from the added processing complexity.