Solana Validators Shift Incentives with Priority Fee Change
Solana's network congestion has led to increased attention on its fee policies. The current system sees a flat base fee per signature, which is split between burning and validators. However, this has been criticized for keeping spam cheap when the network is quiet and not pricing complex calls well.
In July 2026, validators approved SIMD-0096, which routes 100% of transaction priority fees to block producers instead of burning half. This change doesn't affect the base fee, but it signals a shift in incentives.
The proposed solution is a resource-based base fee, which would scale with the resources a transaction actually consumes. This approach has been discussed around SIMD-547 and could potentially increase Solana's daily burn by an order of magnitude in busy periods.