Solana Developers Plan 66% Compute Power Boost to Meet Growing DeFi and NFT Demand
Solana’s core development team is preparing for another major network upgrade aimed at scaling throughput for its rapidly expanding ecosystem. A newly published proposal, SIMD-0286, suggests raising the per-block compute unit (CU) cap from 60 million to 100 million—a 66% increase designed to ease congestion for decentralized finance (DeFi), restaking, and NFT-based applications.
The proposal, shared via the Solana Foundation’s GitHub repository, is part of a broader strategy to enhance transaction capacity across the high-speed blockchain. Validators currently process blocks every 400 milliseconds, and compute unit ceilings determine how much computational effort they can pack into each one. By raising this ceiling, developers expect fewer “compute budget exceeded” errors, especially from demanding protocols like on-chain order books, MEV systems, and DePIN infrastructure.
Solana only recently increased its compute limit on July 23 with the rollout of SIMD-0256, which bumped the ceiling from 48 million to 60 million compute units. That change helped the network sustain around 1,700 transactions per second during peak hours. However, new apps and protocols are pushing that limit again, prompting the need for another lift.
If accepted, the changes in SIMD-0286 would be included in a future software release and automatically activate at a scheduled epoch once validator nodes opt in and complete upgrades.
This move comes as competing blockchains also pursue technical enhancements. Ethereum recently completed its Pectra hard fork, optimizing ephemeral data blobs to better support roll-up scalability. Meanwhile, Bitcoin developers are exploring reactivating OP_CAT, an opcode that could pave the way for advanced scripting features like covenants, bringing more programmability to Bitcoin-based applications.
Solana’s ongoing push to increase its technical ceiling underscores the intensifying race among major chains to cater to the next generation of high-performance, decentralized applications.