Solana Boosts Block Capacity by 66%, But Bottleneck Remains

Solana has increased its block capacity by a massive 66% after raising the per-block compute ceiling from 60 million to 100 million compute units (CUs) on July 29. The move gives unrelated transactions more room, but it does not change the separate cap governing the busiest accounts.

The block limit caps the aggregate CUs a leader can include before the block is full. Compute units measure computational work performed by transactions. While the overall block limit has increased, the maximum compute that can write to any single account within a block remains 12 million CUs, and the maximum block accounts-data size delta remains 100MB.

This distinction carries through to fees. Solana's fee documentation shows an optional prioritization fee depends on a transaction's requested CU limit and CU price, raising its likelihood of being scheduled. However, the higher block ceiling alone does not show that priority fees fell for transactions targeting the same hot state.