Solana block size could nearly double as dev proposes increase to 100M CU

Solana may soon double its block capacity from 60 million to 100 million compute units, aiming to boost transaction throughput and ease network congestion.

The Solana (SOL) network could soon see a dramatic leap in block capacity, with a new proposal suggesting an increase to 100 million compute units per block, nearly doubling the current 60 million CU limit introduced earlier this week.

The proposal, submitted on GitHub by Lucas Bruder, CEO of Jito Labs, argues that Solana’s current traffic is no longer bottlenecked by execution times, making a larger block size both feasible and beneficial. According to Bruder, the original block limits were designed to ensure that most validators could keep up with the network. However, with optimizations and improved validator performance, the network is now capable of processing much larger blocks without degradation.

If approved, the new 100M CU limit would let Solana handle more transactions in each block, easing network congestion and improving performance. However, it could also increase block execution times, and larger blocks may cause unforseen issues in infrastructure beyond the validators.

What does Solana’s block capacity boost mean for users?

The proposal comes on the heels of a recent network upgrade that increased Solana’s block capacity by 20%, from 48 million to 60 million compute units per block.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of infrastructure firm Helius, said that this 20% bump allows for “lower fees, given same demand, more expressiveness for devs, and better UX for users,” laying the groundwork for further capacity increases in the future.

The recent boosts follow challenges Solana faced earlier this year, when a surge in memecoin trading temporarily overwhelmed the network. The increase to 60 million CUs is expected to mitigate similar issues moving forward, while the proposed expansion to 100 million CUs could future-proof the network against even greater demand.