> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://fastlane-labs.gitbook.io/polygon-fastlane/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://fastlane-labs.gitbook.io/polygon-fastlane/what-is-polygon-fastlane/design-principles.md).

# Design Principles

The FastLane protocol was built around seven core design principles:

* User transactions are always as fast as (or faster than) Polygon’s “default” value.
* The removal of the correlation between transaction quantity and trading success.
* No added protections for those who would attack Polygon’s users.
* No custom code for validator nodes and only a one-line patch for sentry nodes.
* Validator liveness and “checkpointing” have neither infrastructure nor codebase dependencies on FastLane Labs.
* No additional security vulnerabilities or attack surfaces for validators.
* Extremely fast and frictionless validator onboarding