Solana’s native on-chain governance went live in July 2026, giving token holders a direct vote on protocol changes. The first major proposal to pass under the new system, SIMD-0096, redirects all transaction priority fees to block producers — a shift from the previous model that burned half of those fees.
How the new governance works
To bring a major proposal to a vote, a proposer must have 100,000 SOL staked. That threshold is meant to ensure only serious, well-backed ideas reach the validator community. Once a proposal is submitted, validators vote on-chain, and the result is automatically enforced by the protocol. The system replaces the earlier off-chain signaling process that lacked binding enforcement.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko publicly backed the move to overhaul the base fee and burn mechanics, endorsing a resource-based fee model that would tie charges to actual network resource consumption rather than a flat per-signature rate.
What SIMD-0096 changes
Under the approved proposal, 100% of priority fees — the extra payments users add to get their transactions processed faster — now go to validators. Previously, half of those fees were burned. The base fee per signature remains unchanged: 50% is still burned, and 50% goes to the validator.
During peak memecoin minting activity, users pushed priority fees higher to secure block space, boosting validator revenue. The change effectively lets validators capture more of that demand-driven income.
The push for resource-based fees
A separate proposal, SIMD-547, is under active discussion. It would replace the current per-signature base fee with a model that scales fees based on how much compute, bandwidth, or storage a transaction actually uses. Yakovenko has voiced support for this approach.
If SIMD-547 were adopted, Solana’s daily burn could rise from an estimated 648 SOL per day to a range of 10,800 to 64,800 SOL per day, depending on the final parameters and network utilization. That would dramatically increase the amount of SOL removed from circulation through fees.
The resource-based model is still in the discussion phase. No formal vote has been scheduled.
What’s next
Validators and the Solana community are now weighing the details of SIMD-547. The outcome will determine whether the network moves to a more dynamic fee structure — and how much SOL gets burned each day. No timeline has been set for a vote.
