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Technical proposal SIMD-0436 Idea

Reduce lamports_per_byte to 3480

  1. Idea
  2. Draft
  3. Review
  4. Accept
  5. Implement
  6. Active

Decision brief

Why this proposal matters

Reduce lamports_per_byte by 50% to 3480, which is equivalent to reducing the rent-exempt minimum balance by half for all new and existing accounts. Requires SIMD-0392: Relaxation of post-execution min_balance check, to allow for subsequent rent increases if necessary.

Source-backed reading aid · source language: EN

Proposal at a glance

What changes

  • Reduce lamports_per_byte by 50% to 3480, which is equivalent to reducing the rent-exempt minimum balance by half for all new and existing accounts. Requires SIMD-0392: Relaxation of post-execution min_balance check, to allow for subsequent rent increases if necessary.

Stakeholder map

Who is affected

Builders & client teams Medium impact

Lower rent for app developers. Existing accounts and programs using the higher rent value will be unaffected, besides being allowed to reduce the balance to the new minimum.

Action requirement unknown
Validators & operators Medium impact

Validators: a potential increase in state growth. In the unlikely case of excessive state growth, rent can be increased back to the legacy value (0392 allows this without significant disruption to existing accounts.)

Action requirement unknown
Users & stakers Impact unknown

No proposal-specific evidence was found for this group.

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

Source-language document. Technical identifiers and evidence remain unchanged. 0616093b2952

Summary

Reduce lamports_per_byte by 50% to 3480, which is equivalent to reducing the rent-exempt minimum balance by half for all new and existing accounts.

Requires SIMD-0392: Relaxation of post-execution min_balance check, to allow for subsequent rent increases if necessary.

Motivation

Minimum account balance depends on an arbitrary constant set years ago that has since increased significantly in real terms due to increases in the SOL price. This has made state allocation cost more expensive on mainnet beta than on competitors, with no compelling justification provided by real resource costs.

New Terminology

N/A

Detailed Design

On feature activation, set the effective lamports_per_byte to 3480 in the bank and rent sysvar (SysvarRent111111111111111111111111111111111), followed by updating DEFAULT_LAMPORTS_PER_BYTE in all relevant SDKs post-activation.

ACCOUNT_STORAGE_OVERHEAD = 128
lamports_per_byte = 3480 // reduced from 6960 by this proposal
effective_size = ACCOUNT_STORAGE_OVERHEAD + data_size_bytes
min_balance = effective_size * lamports_per_byte
            = effective_size * 3480

Alternatives Considered

This proposal is the first step towards further rent reduction and doesn't prevent adoption of alternative solutions like a supervisory controller (SIMD-0389). A 2x reduction is picking the low hanging fruit by modestly reducing the extremely inflated rent cost on mainnet beta today.

Impact

  • Lower rent for app developers. Existing accounts and programs using the higher rent value will be unaffected, besides being allowed to reduce the balance to the new minimum.
  • Validators: a potential increase in state growth. In the unlikely case of excessive state growth, rent can be increased back to the legacy value (0392 allows this without significant disruption to existing accounts.)

Security Considerations

N/A

Backwards Compatibility

Rent reduction is strictly a relaxation of existing constraints so all existing program logic will continue to work as before.

Evidence graph

Related proposals and rollout

One or more sources are unavailable.

Upstream review record

Upstream discussion & review

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simd.watch community discussion · SIMD-0436

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Provenance

Evidence & technical details

Rollout or chain data, source revisions, freshness and integrity.
3

SIMD

Deployment Status

Document lifecycleIdea
CategoryCore protocol

Feature Gate not yet created

Exact source revision

Sources & integrity

  • Proposal document pinned_commit_blob
    0616093b2952ed6de52c4a27d66aadd11d48d4f9
  • simd-document document · stale · Sep 11, 2026
    0616093b2952ed6de52c4a27d66aadd11d48d4f9

One or more sources are unavailable.

One or more sources are unavailable.