Solana Developers Propose Major Block Capacity Increase as Network Usage Rises
Solana core developers have introduced a new proposal—SIMD-0286—that would increase the network’s per-block compute capacity from 60 million to 100 million compute units (CUs), a 66% jump aimed at scaling with growing demand for block space.
The change is designed to give Solana more headroom to handle high-throughput applications such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), restaking protocols, and MEV infrastructure, which are increasingly testing the limits of the network’s compute resources.
“Block limits exist to ensure network participants can keep up,” the proposal explains, “but current mainnet activity is no longer constrained by block execution time.”
Solana generates a block roughly every 400 milliseconds. Each block is currently capped at 60 million CUs, a limit that was raised earlier this month from 50 million via SIMD-0256. However, developers say that capacity is once again becoming insufficient.
SIMD-0286 focuses solely on increasing Max Block Units, the overall compute budget per block. Other limits, like Max Writable Account Units, would remain unchanged. This means the additional capacity would primarily benefit parallelizable, non-vote transactions—such as DeFi swaps and NFT activity—without overloading individual accounts.
If accepted, the proposal would be rolled out via a software update allowing validators to opt in to the new 100 million CU limit, with activation targeted for an upcoming epoch.
As Solana continues to attract developers and users, the move reflects the network’s efforts to stay ahead of demand without compromising decentralization or performance.
