Author: Gu Yu

Solana is undergoing a milestone governance experiment.

On August 23, for the first time in history, Solana officially launched on-chain governance voting, with proposals SGP-0001, SGP-0002, and SGP-0003 entering the voting stage simultaneously. The content of the proposals relates to the governance framework, SOL inflation mechanism, and transaction fee structure, respectively.

This not only signifies that Solana is beginning to delegate some significant decisions to validators and stakers, but also means that network upgrades previously coordinated mainly by core developers and ecosystem institutions are now entering a phase of public competition.

At around 11 PM tonight, the voting on these three governance proposals officially concluded. Both SGP-0001 and SGP-0002 proposals met the minimum voting rate of one-third (the proportion of all valid SOL staked users voting) and the minimum support rate of two-thirds (the proportion of supporting votes among all votes) and will formally enter the implementation phase.

However, SGP-0003, which involves the reconstruction of network fees, did not pass, garnering a support rate of 54.3%, falling a bit short of the 66.6% minimum threshold. Notably, known projects such as Jupiter, Forward Industries, Anagram Staking, and Solana Company were seen on the list of opposing votes.

So, what do SGP-0001 and SGP-0002 mean for the Solana ecosystem? Why did SGP-0003 face huge controversy on social media and ultimately fail to pass?

SGP-0001: Establishing an Official Governance Framework for the First Time

Previously, Solana did not have a clear and standardized on-chain governance process akin to Ethereum's governance system. Traditional SIMD addressed “how to achieve technically,” while the newly introduced SGP aims to answer another question—should Solana move in this direction?

SGP-0001, the "Solana Constitution," forms the institutional foundation of this governance mechanism.

According to this framework, any proposal receiving at least 15% active staker support can enter formal on-chain voting; voting weight is based on the amount of staked SOL. By default, validators express opinions on behalf of the stakers, but stakers can override validator votes through their own staking accounts. To pass a proposal, at least one-third of the network's stake must participate, and it must receive at least two-thirds of the votes in favor from those participating in the staked voting.

The significance of SGP-0001 lies not in changing Solana's performance or token economics, but in providing a formal procedure for future disputes.

SGP-0002: Ending the Inflation Decline Cycle Three Years Early

If SGP-0001 represents institutional development, then SGP-0002 and SGP-0003 directly touch upon the monetary economic model of SOL.

SGP-0002 “Double Disinflation” proposes increasing Solana's annual inflation decline rate from 15% to 30%, while not changing the ultimate inflation floor of 1.5%.

The difference lies in the timeline to reach this endpoint.

According to the proposal's estimates, Solana would originally take about 5.7 years to gradually reach a terminal inflation rate of 1.5%, but the new plan shortens this time to approximately 2.8 years, expected to cumulatively reduce about 18.9 million SOL in new issuance over the next six years.

Supporters argue that this will allow SOL to transition more quickly from the "high inflation, high staking subsidy" early network model to a mature asset model. The SOL treasury company, Forward Industries, believes that reducing new issuance will alleviate selling pressure from staking incentives and reduce dilution for long-term holders; this company estimates that 18.9 million SOL, at its current price, corresponds to about $1.795 billion in potential issuance reduction.

However, opposing voices are straightforward. For validators, inflation rewards are an important source of income. The new plan won’t magically create new network revenue; it only reduces future issuance, thereby implying a decrease in the SOL rewards that validators and stakers can obtain.

This also continues the controversy surrounding Solana's SIMD-0228 in 2025. A similar inflation reform, despite receiving over 60% support, failed because it did not reach the supermajority threshold.

SGP-0003: A Proposal to Truly Change Solana's Economic Model

Compared to SGP-0002, SGP-0003 is more controversial because it changes not just the issuance of SOL, but also the way the entire network prices "block space."

Currently, Solana's base transaction fee is mainly charged as a fixed cost based on the number of signatures. SGP-0003 proposes to break it down into two parts:

One part is a fixed base inclusion fee of 2500 Lamports, all of which is paid to block producers;

The other part is the Resource Fee calculated based on the amount of resources requested by transactions, which will be 100% burned.

The core concept is very simple: the more network resources consumed, the higher the fee paid.

Currently, Solana destroys about 648 SOL daily through the base fee, and supporters of SGP-0003 believe that the new mechanism has the potential to raise this number into the thousands, with some estimates reaching as high as 7500—9000 SOL/day, implying that the daily destruction could increase by around tenfold.

For SOL holders, this seems almost like a natural benefit: reducing new issuance while increasing network destruction will significantly slow the growth rate of SOL supply.

But the problem lies precisely here—fees do not appear out of thin air. The new fees will ultimately be borne by traders, applications, and the on-chain market.

Mostly Data simulated different types of applications and found that ordinary transfers are minimally affected, but complex applications like account creation, CLOB market-making, and on-chain routing will bear significantly higher cost increases. For trading protocols like Jupiter, Titan, and DFlow, the average fee per transaction may increase by approximately 0.000068, 0.00010, and 0.00012 SOL, respectively.

As a result, a rare ideological struggle has emerged within Solana.

The Biggest Controversy: Is This “Resource Pricing” or a Tax on Applications?

Supporters of SGP-0003 believe that Solana's current fee model severely underestimates the resource consumption of complex transactions.

The proposer of SGP-0003, developer Cavey, even publicly acknowledges that this is a “partisan proposal.”

His goal is not to maintain Solana as a completely neutral general computing platform, but to focus Solana more on financial markets. For financial applications, quick confirmations, stable execution, censorship resistance, and predictable resource pricing are more important than “any application must be cheap enough.”

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko also supports this direction. He believes the current fixed signature fee for transactions leads to almost the same base cost for transactions of different sizes. A transaction that consumes only 5000 CU and a large transaction that consumes 1.4 million CU do not have a reasonable price difference under the fixed fee model; thus, re-pricing based on CU can address a real existing problem.

However, application developers do not accept this explanation.

Ellipsis Labs CEO Eugene Chen is one of the most vocal critics. He believes that SGP-0003 is essentially a highly subjective policy disguised as a neutral resource pricing mechanism.

In his view, if the core economic parameters of an application platform can suddenly be altered due to governance voting, then application developers will find it challenging to establish long-term businesses on it.

He even bluntly stated that SGP-0003 is a "middle finger to every micro-structure sensitive application of Solana" because it sends a signal to developers that the cost model acceptable today may be completely rewritten due to a governance vote tomorrow.

Manifest's stance is also clearly against. They argue that the truly scarce resource on Solana is the priority ordering in blocks, which has already been priced through priority fees. In contrast, the abundant block space is not genuinely scarce but will incur extra charges under SGP-0003.

Manifest further warns that excessive resource fees might even produce counterproductive effects: to reduce CU costs, developers may be forced to cut on-chain security checks, thereby increasing security risks.

On-chain voting records show that Jupiter, Drift, Forward Industries, and Anagram Staking voted against the SGP-0003 proposal; large stakers such as Figment, Staking Facilities, Kiln, and P2P.org clearly expressed support, while Everstake abstained.

Conclusion

From technological advancements to market performance, Solana is clearly in a phase of expansion.

In July, Solana increased the single block computational limit from 60 million CU to 100 million CU, continuing to free up space for higher on-chain transaction density; in August, the mainnet Slot time was further reduced to 350 ms, with plans to advance to 200 ms. Firedancer has entered mainnet operation, and next-generation consensus upgrades like Alpenglow are also in progress. Meanwhile, financial applications like RWA, stablecoin payments, and tokenized stocks are expanding, with Solana attempting to convert its high-performance advantages into more significant real economic activities.

SOL's price also experienced a rapid rebound, rising from around $75 in August to over $110. Under the combined effects of technological upgrades, ecosystem expansion, and market expectations, Solana seems to be regaining market pricing for the next stage of growth.

However, the first governance vote revealed another side.

The faster the network and the larger its capacity do not mean that all participants will benefit from it. The passage of SGP-0002 indicates that the market has formed a certain consensus on reducing SOL's long-term inflation; yet the failure of SGP-0003 to garner sufficient support shows that application developers remain highly vigilant regarding sudden cost increases and the redefinition of economic rules.

This is actually the most realistic contradiction for Solana today: it is striving to become a more robust financial infrastructure, but it has not yet fully addressed how that infrastructure should be priced.

In the past, Solana's competitive logic was relatively simple—lower fees, higher performance, stronger throughput; but as more transactions, market-making, payments, and RWA activities start to occur on-chain, "low cost" itself is no longer just a user experience factor—it begins to directly affect the business models of applications.

Thus, the first round of governance leaves behind not just the victory or defeat of a specific proposal, but a clearer dividing line: Solana can no longer rely solely on technological routes to drive network growth; in the future, it must also seek a new balance between developer interests, validator earnings, SOL holder value, and the long-term sustainability of the network.

When a public chain transitions from “pursuing performance” to “carrying economics,” governance no longer remains a subordinate mechanism but becomes a competitive factor itself. Solana's first round of governance may merely be the beginning of this game.

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