Solana Targets Larger Blocks: 66% Increase Proposed to Handle Growing On-Chain Activity

Solana Developers Propose 66% Block Compute Expansion to Meet Surging Demand

Solana developers have introduced a new proposal, SIMD-0286, that would raise the network’s per-block compute limit from 60 million to 100 million compute units (CUs) — a 66% increase aimed at accommodating rising transaction demand.

The proposal comes amid growing activity from decentralized exchanges, MEV systems, and restaking protocols, all of which are pushing the current limits of block capacity. According to a document posted by core contributors, the network’s throughput is no longer bottlenecked by execution time, making room for a significant compute ceiling increase.

“This proposal aims [to make] a substantial increase in block limits to 100 million CUs, in order to provide additional capacity to the network,” the document states.

Solana currently produces blocks every 400 milliseconds, with compute ceilings controlling how much processing each block can handle. Earlier this month, the network upgraded from 50M to 60M compute units per block via SIMD-0256. But that relief appears temporary as developer and user demand continues to climb.

Under SIMD-0286, validators would be able to opt in to the higher compute ceiling via a software update, with activation planned for a future epoch once consensus is reached.

The change applies only to Max Block Units, leaving other constraints like Max Writable Account Units untouched. That means most of the benefits would accrue to parallelizable transactions — such as DeFi swaps and NFT mints — without increasing stress on individual account processing.

If implemented, the proposal would help Solana sustain its high-speed performance amid an accelerating wave of adoption and builder activity.