Solana’s Bold 66% Block Upgrade: Scaling to New Heights in 2025

Solana's network is gearing up for a seismic shift—engineers are pushing a 66% block capacity upgrade to tackle its infamous congestion woes. This isn't just a patch; it's a full-throttle infrastructure overhaul.

Why this matters now

With DeFi degens and NFT traders clogging lanes, Solana's 'speed demon' reputation took hits during peak demand. The upgrade targets raw throughput—more transactions, fewer failed swaps, and (hopefully) fewer rage-quit tweets.

The cynical hedge fund take

Wall Street's already whispering: 'Great, now institutional investors can lose money 66% faster.' But for builders? This could be the scalability unlock Solana's ecosystem has needed since its 2021 breakout.

Higher compute units to unlock more throughput

The proposal outlines a plan to increase the maximum compute units (CUs) per block from 60 million to 100 million. Since each solana block processes every 400 milliseconds, this adjustment would significantly boost the network’s throughput.

According to the Solana Foundation’s GitHub post, the change would enable a higher volume of on-chain transactions, especially benefiting DeFi developers and users who rely on compute-heavy applications.

Raising the CU cap will particularly help decentralized exchanges (DEXs) with on-chain order books and MEV auction systems, which often hit computation ceilings. However, it will also raise the hardware requirements for validators, demanding faster, more robust systems to keep up.

Previous upgrade set the stage for more demand

Back in July, Solana implemented SIMD-0256, lifting the compute limit to 60 million CUs. That update pushed average throughput to around 1,700 transactions per second during peak hours.

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Since then, a growing wave of activity—including re-staking protocols, DePIN infrastructure, and NFT minting—has started pushing block space to its limits again. Developers responded with SIMD-0286 to meet the surging demand.

Community testing underway before network-wide activation

The proposal is still under review and testing by the Solana development community. If approved, the upgrade will be included in a future software release and activated in an upcoming epoch, once a supermajority of validators adopts it.

For Solana, this is another step toward scaling to meet next-generation blockchain application demands—without sacrificing speed or decentralization.

Kosta Gushterov

Kosta has been working in the crypto industry for over 4 years. He strives to present different perspectives on a given topic and enjoys the sector for its transparency and dynamism. In his work, he focuses on balanced coverage of events and developments in the crypto space, providing information to his readers from a neutral perspective.

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