Solana is lowering the storage margin requirements for accounts on the chain in five stages. As the minimum balance threshold decreases, some accounts will be able to withdraw the excess SOL that was originally used for storage. According to the calculations in the text, this amount is approximately 3.06 million SOL, which is why it is referred to by the outside world as a "319 million USD airdrop," but this is not the network distributing new coins to users.
This SOL originally belonged to the account holder.
The so-called "rent" is not a fee that users have already paid; rather, it refers to the refundable balance that is locked in the account to maintain storage on the blockchain. By reducing the lamports required per byte, Solana lowers the minimum SOL needed to maintain the account. The amount in the account that exceeds this new threshold can then be reclaimed.
Solana enabled the first phase of SIMD-0437 on September 3rd at epoch 1028, reducing the value required per byte from 6,960 to 6,333, which represents a decrease of about 9% in the first phase. If all five subsequent phases are completed, this constant will be reduced to 696, a decrease of 90% from the original value.
The subsequent four stages will be progressed depending on the network status.
Developers will not make all adjustments at once; instead, they will observe the growth of the chain's status at each stage before deciding whether to proceed further. If the growth in status causes problems, another protective mechanism, SIMD-0438, can restore the parameters back to their original value of 6,960.
The second phase entered the test network on September 3rd, and the corresponding value will further decrease to 5,080 lamports / byte. Developers expect this phase to go live on the main network in mid-September. The remaining three phases are planned to be advanced in November with the Agave version 4.4.
Users can withdraw balances that exceed the minimum threshold.
The article states that as long as one holds the SOL or Solana ecosystem tokens in their wallet and has a corresponding token account, they may be eligible to withdraw funds. Users can retrieve the difference between the current account rent balance and the new minimum threshold after each round of parameter adjustments.
On P-token in May, Solana Token Program added the WithdrawExcessLamports command. This feature allows wallets, DeFi applications, and other on-chain services to withdraw amounts exceeding the minimum requirements from token accounts, coinage accounts, or multi-signature accounts without closing the account or affecting the token balance.
- The first phase has been launched on the mainnet.
- Only a small portion of the final target reduction is being released at this time.
- Approximately 90% remains to be extracted gradually after the completion of the subsequent four stages.
The transaction capacity upgrade has also entered the test network.
In addition to the adjustment of storage thresholds, Transaction V1 has also entered the test network. This upgrade increases the maximum size of a single transaction from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes, with the goal of supporting more complex on-chain loads.
According to the article, a larger transaction format can accommodate scenarios such as zero-knowledge proofs, large multi-signature transactions, and confidential transfers, and can complete more data processing in a single transaction.
