Solana Core Developers has released a new development proposal SIMD-0286 with the aim of increasing the processing power of the network.
Solana developers plan to increase block calculation limit by 66% to increase network capacity
The purpose of this proposal is to increase the unit limit that can be processed from 60 million CUS to 100 million CUs per 400 millisecond block on the Solana blockchain, representing a capacity increase of 66%.
According to a proposal published on the Solana Foundation’s GitHub page, the update is intended to increase network throughput by enabling higher transaction volumes, particularly for distributed finance (DEFI) users and developers.
Block limits define the maximum computational load that a voter can process within each block. By increasing this limit, applications that require high computing power, particularly purchase order-based distributed exchange (DEX) and Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) auctions, can work without encountering “exceeding the calculation budget” errors. However, this also requires more robust processing power from the validator.
Solana Network increased its block limit to 60 million CUs on SIMD-0256 on July 23rd. This change allowed the network to process approximately 1,700 transactions per second during the day. However, with the rise in applications such as protocol restake, NFT mint, and Depin projects running on the network, developers have started to demand more block space.
The proposal for SIMD-0286 is currently being discussed and tested within the community. This update will be deployed in a future software release and will be automatically activated in a future epoch once the majority of network variators accept the upgrade.
This development comes when rival blockchains are deploying their own upgrades. Ethereum with Pectra Hardfork has enhanced the use of short-lived data blobs for rollups introduced in the DenCun update.
The Bitcoin community is working on a new OPCODE called OP_CAT. This improves smart contract functionality and scripting, paving the way for more programmable transactions on the network.
This increase in block capacity proposed by Solana is considered an important step in the highly competitive blockchain infrastructure development race.
*This is not investment advice.
