Solana Boosts Block Capacity By 20%, More On The Way

The Solana network increased its block capacity by 20% on Tuesday, raising the limit to 60 million compute units (CU) and plans to expand this further before the end of the year.

Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, which provides infrastructure and tooling for Solana developers, said in an X post on Wednesday that the upgrade means the Solana network can now fit more transactions per block.

“This capacity used to be 48 million CUs, meaning the sum total of all transactions for a given block must be around this number,” he said.

The increase should result in “lower fees, given same demand, more expressiveness for devs, and better UX for users,” according to Mumtaz.

Every Solana transaction consumes compute units, varying significantly depending on the complexity.

In January, users reported difficulties processing transactions on the Solana network due to a flood in memecoins, including when US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump launched their memecoins.

Block capacity could go even higher

There are also plans to increase the block capacity to 100 CUs, according to another proposal on GitHub, created by Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito Labs, which builds infrastructure for Solana.

“The original block limits’ primary purpose was to ensure the vast majority of network participants can keep up with the network, by restricting the amount of work a leader is allowed to pack into a block,” Bruder said in the proposal.

“However, current mainnet traffic is largely not constrained by large block execution times. This proposal aims a substantial increase in block limits to 100M CUs, in order to provide additional capacity to the network,” he added.

Mumtaz said the goal is to at least double the 60 CU limit in the future.

Solana crosses $200 as firms stockpile tokens

On Monday, Solana jumped 12% to over $202, according to Nansen data. In the last seven days, the token is up 11%, and it’s currently trading for just over $191.

Meanwhile, several firms have started stacking Solana. Nasdaq-listed firm DeFi Development Corp said on Monday that it’s now one token away from crossing a million in its treasury.

Related: Solana ranks second in DEX volumes — Will SOL price follow?

Bitcoin mining firm Bit Mining announced on July 10 that it was making a strategic shift into the Solana ecosystem, with plans to raise up to $300 million to build a Solana token treasury.

Ether gas limit rising too

Solana isn’t the only network upgrading its block capacity. Ether’s gas limit increased to just under 45 million units, as of Tuesday, according to data platform Ycharts.

The latest gas limit increase is the first significant climb since February, when it was raised from 30 million to 36 million.

Magazine: China’s 100K TPS blockchain, Japan’s Minna Bank eyes Solana: Asia Express