Overview
- Jump Crypto’s Firedancer filed SIMD-0370 to scrap Solana’s 60 million compute-unit limit per block and allow capacity to scale with validator hardware, letting slower validators skip oversized blocks.
- The change is designed to activate after the Alpenglow upgrade, which targets 100–150 ms finality and introduces skip-votes, with testnet slated for December and mainnet targeted for Q1 2026.
- Backers argue the shift would raise throughput and create a “performance flywheel,” with Firedancer citing >1 million TPS in testing and producers incentivized to pack more transactions for higher fees.
- Engineers and community members warn of centralization and networking risks, noting potential advantages for well-funded or geographically favored validators and possible propagation delays or skipped votes.
- The proposal remains under GitHub review, with reviewers noting some limits would still apply (such as maximum shreds and per-transaction CU limits) and that overly heavy blocks would simply be skipped under Alpenglow’s rules.