Protocol radar
What changes next on Solana — and when
Every protocol upgrade, watched on-chain across mainnet, testnet and devnet. Queued upgrades get a live countdown; the ones that break things get a plain-English guide.
chain last read · mainnet epoch 1060 · 216 ms slots (measured)
Up next
SIMD-0437-3Not scheduled yet — the moment activation is requested on-chain, a countdown appears here.
Lowers rent to 2,575 lamports per byte.
T Testnet · D Devnet · M Mainnet · ✓ live since · ⏱ lands in · ~ expected · ⚠ announced, not queued
Queued 0
Nothing queued right now — activations appear here the moment they are requested on-chain.
On deck 14
Nothing here can land before the next epoch boundary, 2026-10-18 07:25 UTC.
Direct Account Pointers
SIMD-0449Programs read account inputs through direct pointers instead of copies — faster account access.
Maps account data directly into program memory instead of copying it on every load.
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Rent Cut — Step 5 of 5
SIMD-0437-5The final step: 696 lamports per byte, completing the 90% rent cut.
Rent Cut Rollback
SIMD-0438The safety valve for the rent cut: restores the legacy 6,960 lamports-per-byte rate if a reduction step needs reverting.
Alpenglow
SIMD-0326The new consensus algorithm — the largest consensus change since launch, targeting dramatically faster finality.
Alpenglow Fast Leader Handover
SIMD-0326Alpenglow companion gate: fast leader handover between slots.
CPI Nesting Limit 4 → 8
SIMD-0268Raises the cross-program-invocation depth limit from 4 to 8, unblocking deeper program composition.
Retire SBPF v0–v2 Deployment
SIMD-0500Disables deployment of programs targeting the legacy SBPF v0, v1 and v2 bytecode formats.
Block Revenue Sharing
SIMD-0123In-protocol sharing of block revenue between validators and their stakers.
Activated 23
Slot Time → 200ms
SIMD-0525-4Slot time step 4 of 4: the 200ms target — halving block times from where the year started.
Slot Time → 250ms
SIMD-0525-3Slot time step 3 of 4: a block every 250ms, down from 300ms — faster confirmations for everything on Solana.
Transaction V1
SIMD-03854,096-byte transactions in a new wire format: resource limits move into the message, lookup tables are gone, and un-upgraded readers start failing the moment it activates.
Custom Commission Collector
SIMD-0232Validators can send their commission on inflation rewards and block revenue to an account of their choosing — a program that splits it, for example — instead of the vote account and identity wallet.
Show 18 more ↓Show less ↑
Rent Cut — Step 1 of 5
SIMD-0437-1Lowers rent from 6,960 to 6,333 lamports per byte — the first of five feature-gated reductions on the way to a 90% cut.
BPF Stake Program v5.1.0
SIMD-0391Upgrades the BPF stake program to v5.1.0 with fixed-point warmup and cooldown math.
Slot Time → 350ms
SIMD-0525-1Slot time step 1 of 4: blocks every 350ms instead of 400ms.
Block Limit → 100M CU
SIMD-0286Raises the per-block compute limit to 100 million compute units — more work per block.
Fee-Only Transaction Semantics
SIMD-0186Defines fee-only semantics: transactions that fail account loading still pay their fee, deterministically.
Alpenglow VAT
SIMD-0357Alpenglow groundwork: the VAT implementation lands ahead of the consensus switch.
Alpenglow Handover Markers
SIMD-0337Markers for Alpenglow fast leader handover and shred placement rules.
Commission in Basis Points
SIMD-0291Validator commission moves from whole percents to basis points — finer-grained rates.
BLS Pubkey Management
SIMD-0387BLS public keys in vote accounts — consensus groundwork for Alpenglow.
Tightens which memory addresses syscall parameters may reference.
SBPF v3 Programs
SIMD-0178Enables deployment and execution of SBPFv3 programs (with SIMD-0189 and SIMD-0377).
Chained Block ID — Full Check
SIMD-0340The encompassing check completing chained block id validation.
Delay Commission Updates
SIMD-0249Validator commission changes take effect at the next epoch instead of immediately.
What a feature gate is
Solana ships protocol changes behind on-chain switches. Each switch is a tiny account anyone can read — which is exactly what this page does.
Why "queued" means days, not months
Once an upgrade is queued, the network activates it at the next epoch boundary — at most about two days away. That is why queued upgrades get a countdown, and why "officially scheduled" has none: Anza opens a release’s activations after 95% of stake adopts it, then queues each one by hand.
Testnet goes first
Upgrades usually activate on testnet before mainnet, so the testnet column is a preview of what mainnet does next.
Read from the chain, not from announcements
The status here comes from reading the switches themselves, refreshed about every minute. When nothing is scheduled, we say so — no invented dates.