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Technical proposal SIMD-0249 Activated

Delay Commission Updates

by Justin Starry (Anza) Source updated Oct 28, 2026

  1. Idea
  2. Draft
  3. Review
  4. Accept
  5. Implement
  6. Active
View proposal document ↗
⚠ 1 source or integrity warning(s). Review before acting. ⚠ 1 source observation(s) are not fresh. Each source keeps its own timestamp and status below.

Decision brief

Why this proposal matters

Allow validators to update their commission rate at any time but delay those commission updates for at least one full epoch.

Source-backed reading aid · source language: EN

Proposal at a glance

What changes

  • Allow validators to update their commission rate at any time but delay those commission updates for at least one full epoch.

Stakeholder map

Who is affected

Builders & client teams Medium impact

Update the core vote program to no longer restrict commission increases from happening during the first half of the epoch.

Action requirement unknown
Validators & operators Medium impact

A feature gate will be used to simultaneously update vote program rules around commission rate updates as well as update the runtime's commission calculations at epoch boundaries.

Action requirement unknown
Users & stakers Medium impact

Stake delegators will have at least one full epoch to react to commission updates.

Action requirement unknown
Governance & ecosystem Impact unknown

No proposal-specific evidence was found for this group.

Action requirement unknown

Exact source revision

Full proposal document

View proposal document ↗
Source-language document. Technical identifiers and evidence remain unchanged. 6cc17538e266

Summary

Allow validators to update their commission rate at any time but delay those commission updates for at least one full epoch.

Motivation

Validators should be able update their desired commission at any time. That said, stake delegators should always have ample time to re-delegate their stake in response to validator commission rate changes.

New Terminology

NA

Detailed Design

Runtime

For a given epoch E, the earned inflation rewards for each vote account are calculated at the beginning of the next epoch E + 1. During inflation reward calculation, use the inflation rewards commission rate from the vote account state as it existed at the beginning of epoch E - 1. If the vote account did not exist at that time, fall back to the vote account state at the beginning of epoch E. And if the vote account did not exist then either, fall back to the vote account state at the beginning of epoch E + 1.

UpdateCommission

Update the core vote program to no longer restrict commission increases from happening during the first half of the epoch.

Alternatives Considered

NA

Impact

  • Validators will need to wait at least one full epoch before their commission updates are applied.

  • Stake delegators will have at least one full epoch to react to commission updates.

Security Considerations

NA

Drawbacks (Optional)

Why should we not do this?

Backwards Compatibility (Optional)

A feature gate will be used to simultaneously update vote program rules around commission rate updates as well as update the runtime's commission calculations at epoch boundaries.

Evidence graph

Related proposals and rollout

One or more sources are unavailable.

Upstream review record

Upstream discussion & review

GitHub review is editorial context, not evidence of on-chain support, voting, or outcome.

PR #249 · merged SIMD-0249: Delay Commission Updates 13 comments and reviews · Jan 19, 2026
@joncinque

This presupposes that VoteStateV4 already exists, correct? If so, can you add a reference to that SIMD?

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

If I create a vote account and start getting delegations in epoch E - 1, then those stakes aren't active until the start of epoch E, and they should receive rewards after epoch E. Actually at earliest they will start receiving rewards for epoch E + 1 (distributed in epoch E + 2) because that's the earliest epoch in which your vote account could be in the leader schedule. We use the stake distribution at the beginning of epoch E to determine the leader schedule for E + 1 and epoch E is the earliest epoch in which your vote account would be staked.

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

I added a "Dependencies" section in https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/pull/249/commits/11759042a51adb5b01e2947f168a415ddc9bddb8

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

I updated this section and explicitly called out the new validator case: https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/pull/249/commits/11759042a51adb5b01e2947f168a415ddc9bddb8

GitHub ↗
@joncinque

Oh gotcha, I wasn't aware that it took an extra epoch to start earning voting rewards. I thought as soon as a validator had active stake, they could earn voting rewards. Thanks for the clarification!

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

Sorry I was mixing up inflation rewards with block revenue. My explanation about the leader schedule makes no sense for inflation rewards. So yes, we need to handle new validators as you pointed out! It looks like it's also possible to delegate to a vote account that isn't fully initialized yet. So when a vote account is initialized and starts voting in epoch E it would already be earning rewards in that epoch. Since there are a few edge cases here that add complexity to the proposal I think it's best to simplify this SIMD to only being about commission rates being updated to basis points and then try to handle commission rugs in a separate SIMD.

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

Simplified here https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/pull/249/commits/a25eca4528b3320f399c9992e92a9771a5f7e0d1 I still want to do the delay commission updates change at some point but I don't want that change to hold up getting the new UpdateCommissionBps instruction in because it's a blocker for https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/pull/123

GitHub ↗
@jstarry

I moved the commission rate in basis points change to a new SIMD and reverted this SIMD back to dealing with delayed commission rate updates. New SIMD is here: https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/pull/291

GitHub ↗

simd.watch community discussion · SIMD-0249

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Provenance

Evidence & technical details

Rollout or chain data, source revisions, freshness and integrity.
2

SIMD

Deployment Status

Document lifecycleActivated
CategoryCore protocol

Feature Gate not yet created

Exact source revision

Sources & integrity

  • Proposal document pinned_commit_blob
    6cc17538e26601e65beca89bbfa761e755720956
  • simd-document document · stale · Oct 28, 2026
    6cc17538e26601e65beca89bbfa761e755720956

One or more sources are unavailable.