New Proposal Aims to Boost Solana’s Block Size by 66% Amid Rising Usage Pressure

Solana Developers Propose Major Block Capacity Upgrade to Meet Surging Demand

Solana developers have introduced a proposal to increase the network’s per-block compute limit by 66%, aiming to support growing demand and more complex applications.

The upgrade proposal, SIMD-0286, suggests lifting the compute ceiling from 60 million to 100 million compute units (CUs) per block. This change would allow the network to process a greater volume of transactions and handle heavier workloads, such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), MEV protocols, and restaking platforms, without running into existing compute limits.

“Block limits exist to ensure network-wide performance stability, but current traffic is not constrained by execution times,” the proposal notes. “This increase would offer greater transaction throughput without sacrificing validator performance.”

Solana currently finalizes blocks every 400 milliseconds with strict compute caps. A previous upgrade, SIMD-0256, increased the compute limit from 50 million to 60 million earlier this month. With developer activity accelerating, the latest proposal is seen as a necessary step to keep up with rising demand.

If approved, the higher compute threshold would be optional, requiring validators to opt in via a future software upgrade. The change would take effect in a later epoch once sufficient validator adoption is reached.

Only the Max Block Units would be increased under SIMD-0286. Other limits, including Max Writable Account Units, would remain unchanged — meaning the additional compute would mainly benefit parallel, non-vote transactions like DeFi trades and NFT minting, rather than stressing individual accounts.

The proposal underscores Solana’s ongoing efforts to scale its infrastructure to meet the needs of increasingly complex applications and higher network usage.