On July 23, 2025, Solana implemented the SIMD-0256 proposal, increasing its block size by 20% from 50 million to 60 million Compute Units (CUs), per bitcoinethereumnews.com. Led by Andrew Fitzgerald and the Solana Validator Community, this upgrade, activated via Agave v2.2, aims to boost network throughput, enabling more transactions per block and reducing transaction times, per Coincu. X posts from @martypartymusic and @solananew confirm the change, noting positive community feedback on Solana forums for enhanced scalability, though Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation remained silent. This follows the SIMD-0207 increase from 48M to 50M CUs in April 2025, per solanafloor.com.
The 20% block size increase allows Solana to pack more transactions into its 128MB blocks, processed every 400 milliseconds, potentially pushing theoretical throughput beyond 81,000 TPS, per medium.com. Each transaction consumes 200,000–1.4M CUs, with priority fees (100% to validators post-SIMD-0096) tied to CU usage, per solana.com. The upgrade, tested on the 2.27 testnet release, addresses past congestion issues from 2022 outages, per crypto.news, while maintaining 16 months of 100% uptime, per solana.com. However, higher CU limits demand more validator resources, raising concerns about centralization risks for smaller operators, per blog.rated.network. Firedancer, a new client by Jump Crypto, could further scale TPS to 1M, per solanafloor.com.
Solana (SOL) trades at $190.85, down 5.27% in 24 hours but up 25.74% over 90 days, with a $102B market cap and 2.64% dominance, per CoinMarketCap. The $10B 24-hour trading volume reflects strong activity, though down 12.8%, per Coincu. The upgrade aligns with Solana’s roadmap, including Alpenglow for faster finality and RPS 2.0 for read-write decoupling, per solanacompass.com. Institutional adoption, like Visa’s USDC integration and Coinbase’s 50% USDC treasury revenue, per solanacompass.com, bolsters SOL’s outlook. X posts from @CryptoCurb highlight reduced fees and improved performance, though SEC scrutiny and US tariffs pose risks, per Reuters and en.wikipedia.org.
SOL’s $190.85 price could test $200 resistance if momentum holds, with $180 as support, per TradingView. The CU increase may reduce fees, boosting DeFi platforms like Jito (9.4M SOL TVL) and Kamino ($1.05B TVL), per stakin.com. Investors should monitor validator performance via Solana Compass and Firedancer progress, per solanacompass.com. Diversify into ETH ($3,811) or ONDO ($1.08) to hedge volatility, per CoinMarketCap. The Solana Policy Institute’s regulatory efforts, per solanacompass.com, and Trump’s pro-crypto stance, per WisdomTree, support growth, but infrastructure strain risks remain, per tekedia.com. Track @SolanaFloor on X for updates. Solana’s scalability push strengthens its edge, but cautious navigation is key.
