Jump’s Firedancer Proposes Removing Solana’s Fixed Block Limits, Scaling with Validator Power

Jump Trading’s Firedancer team has proposed eliminating Solana’s fixed compute unit block limits, allowing validators to dynamically scale transaction capacity based on their hardware performance rather than arbitrary protocol ￰0￱ SIMD-0370 proposal would create market-driven incentives where block producers continuously upgrade equipment to pack more transactions and earn higher revenues. Jump’s Firedancer team proposed SIMD-0370 to remove Solana’s fixed compute unit block limit after ￰1￱ of a static cap (60M CUs, rising to 100M in SIMD-0286), block producers pack max transactions, and slower validators skip ￰2￱ drives a cycle: producers… — Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 28, 2025 The proposal follows Solana’s overwhelmingly approved Alpenglow consensus upgrade , which received 99.60% validator support with 149.3 million SOL voting in ￰3￱ introduces skip-vote mechanisms that make fixed block limits redundant by automatically bypassing blocks that take too long to ￰4￱ the current system, network capacity is artificially constrained by compute unit limits rather than actual validator ￰5￱ argues that this creates perverse incentives, where superior hardware provides no competitive advantage, thereby stifling innovation and network growth.

However, despite its innovative sound, the proposal has sparked some community debate, with critics warning about potential ￰6￱ argued that validators with expensive hardware could dominate, while smaller operators struggle to keep ￰7￱ question compatibility with future multiple concurrent proposer designs that may require synchronized execution ￰8￱ Arms Race Could Transform Network Economics The proposal would create a competitive flywheel, where block producers must continuously improve their performance to maximize transaction fees and maintain their market ￰9￱ running slower client software would face reduced profitability, incentivizing rapid adoption of performance improvements across the ￰10￱ developers argue that superior validator clients would capture larger market shares as operators seek higher rewards.) September 27, 2025 ETF analyst Nate Geraci suggested approvals could arrive by mid-October, potentially driving institutional demand for SOL ￰11￱ REX-Osprey Solana Staking ETF already launched with $33 million in trading volume and $12 million in first-day inflows, demonstrating growing institutional ￰12￱ forward, the removal of compute limits will be a fundamental shift toward market-based capacity scaling, which contrasts with Ethereum’s fee auction model and Bitcoin’s fixed block ￰13￱ new, a successful implementation could enhance Solana’s speed and make it retain its status as a high-performance blockchain, which Ethereum and BNB Chain have been threatening lately.

However, implementation risks require careful management to preserve network stability, which is not yet guaranteed, based on the current state of the community discussion.