Solana Core Developers Present a New Proposal to Increase Network Transaction Capacity! Here Are the Details

Solana core developers have published a new development proposal, SIMD-0286, with the aim of increasing the processing capacity of the network.

Solana Developers Plan to Increase Block Computation Limit by 66% to Increase Network Capacity

This proposal aims to increase the compute unit limit that can be processed every 400 millisecond blocks on the Solana blockchain from 60 million CUs to 100 million CUs, representing a 66% capacity increase.

According to the proposal published on the Solana Foundation’s GitHub page, this update aims to increase the network’s throughput by enabling higher transaction volume, particularly for decentralized finance (DeFi) users and developers.

Block limits define the maximum computational load that validators can process within each block. Increasing this limit will allow applications that require high computational power, particularly orderbook-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) auctions, to operate without encountering “computation budget exceeded” errors. However, this will also require more robust processing capacity from validators.

The Solana network increased its block limit to 60 million CUs with SIMD-0256 on July 23rd. This change allowed the network to process approximately 1,700 transactions per second during daylight hours. However, with the rise of applications like re-staking protocols, NFT minting, and DePIN projects operating on the network, developers began demanding more block space.

The SIMD-0286 proposal is currently being discussed and tested within the community. The update is expected to be deployed with a future software release and automatically activate in a future epoch once a majority of network validators have accepted the upgrade.

This development comes at a time when rival blockchains are rolling out their own upgrades. Ethereum, with its Pectra hardfork, has enhanced its use of ephemeral data blobs for rollups, introduced in the Dencun update.

The Bitcoin community is working on a new opcode called OP_CAT, which could improve smart contract capabilities and scripting, paving the way for more programmable transactions on the network.

This block capacity increase proposed by Solana is considered a critical step in the intensely competitive blockchain infrastructure development race.

*This is not investment advice.