getBlockTime

getBlockTime returns the estimated production time of a slot on Solana, the Proof-of-History and Proof-of-Stake chain whose native token is SOL. The value is an i64 Unix timestamp (seconds) derived from the stake-weighted timestamps that validators attach when they vote, so it reflects roughly when the block was produced rather than an exact wall clock. Since Solana itself orders events by slot rather than by time, this method is how you map a slot back to a human-readable moment. It returns null when the node cannot determine a time for the slot. Call it against https://solana.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY as a JSON-RPC 2.0 POST passing the slot as the single positional param.

Use cases

• Timestamp a Solana transaction by looking up the production time of the slot it landed in, for receipts, history views, or accounting.
• Build a time axis for a block-by-block chart, turning a sequence of slots into evenly labeled points for throughput or price graphs.
• Convert a slot to wall-clock time for display in a wallet or explorer like Solscan, so users see "2 minutes ago" instead of a raw slot number.

Parameters

Response

Example request

1curl https://solana.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6  "id": 1,
7  "method": "getBlockTime",
8  "params": [
9    250000000
10  ]
11}'

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• The timestamp is an estimate aggregated from validator votes, not a precise clock reading — treat it as approximate and avoid using it for sub-second ordering.
• The method returns null for slots the node cannot time, such as skipped or purged slots. Always handle the null case instead of assuming a number comes back.

Supported networks

• Mainnet
• Devnet

See also

• getBlock
• getBlockHeight