Akash Network Picks Solana to Replace Its Cosmos Chain as AKT Stakers Vote on Prop 346

Akash Network is planning to leave Cosmos for Solana. The project's core team said on 26 October 2026 that it "has selected Solana as the next home for Akash Network", the decentralized marketplace where people rent GPU and cloud compute from independent providers. Akash runs today on its own Cosmos chain, akashnet-2. AKT stakers now decide: Prop 346, "Migrate the Akash Protocol to Solana", opened at 15:02 UTC on 26 October and closes at 15:02 UTC on 2 November. A yes vote approves launching AKT on Solana as a 1:1 SPL token, the standard token format on Solana.

The early count is lopsided. As of about 19:25 UTC on 26 October, the on-chain tally showed roughly 37.7 million AKT voting yes against 0.66 million no. By our arithmetic from Akash's bonded-stake figure of about 89.8 million AKT, that is about 98% yes on a turnout near 43% of bonded AKT, already above the 33.4% quorum Akash's blog sets for the vote. Akash founder Greg Osuri posted at 18:50 UTC that the community "passed the proposal in record time" and that the move "is now official", adding that "there is still a small chance voters can change their decision". On-chain, Prop 346 stays in its voting period until 2 November, and votes can still move.

What Prop 346 approves, and what waits for a cutover vote

Prop 346 authorises the AKT token launch on Solana; moving the marketplace needs a later vote. The proposal says SPL AKT is "expected 2 to 3 weeks after this proposal passes", and the blog adds that launch waits until two independent audits have passed. AKT keeps its ticker and its six decimals. Holders convert through a one-way portal that the proposal says stays "open for 2 years from token launch", and "there is no path back".

The compute marketplace itself moves only after a second governance proposal sets a cutover date, once more audits and rehearsals clear. A no vote on Prop 346 sends the program back to analysis, according to the blog.

No official SPL version of AKT exists yet. Akash says the launch date will be announced "through official Akash channels", and its own risk list names fake migration portals, with one official domain as the defence. Any AKT token already trading on Solana before that announcement is not one Akash has published.

Why Akash chose Solana over an EVM layer 2

Akash weighed seven options under AEP-79, a request for proposals written by Osuri: Solana mainnet, an existing EVM layer 2 (the runner-up), a dedicated Arbitrum Orbit rollup, Ethereum itself, a Solana Virtual Machine layer 2 such as Eclipse, Cosmos shared security and staying put. The blog gives four reasons for the pick. Akash "stops paying for a chain it does not use", gets headroom "at near-zero cost", joins the place where "DePIN already lives", and gains liquidity and users.

The first reason is the expensive one. About 100 validators bond AKT "only to secure consensus" for roughly 15,000 marketplace transactions a day, per the blog, which also cites the engineering drag of maintaining forked Cosmos software to keep that chain running.

On cost, Akash puts the whole marketplace at "about 0.075 SOL a day" in Solana network fees at current volume. That is a rounding error for Solana: the network collected about 5,500 SOL a day in base and priority fees from 19 to 25 October 2026, by Solana Compass's count. Akash's own table puts a bid on a calm day at about $0.0008 on Solana against $0.007 on an EVM layer 2, and closing a deployment under heavy load at about $0.0014 against $0.43. Each lease also locks a refundable rent deposit of about 0.024 SOL, which the blog prices at roughly $3.60 at $150 per SOL.

The blog also lists what would have flipped the decision to EVM: exchanges covering 80% of AKT volume rejecting Solana's Token-2022 standard, Alpenglow "turning visibly unstable", two or more top-five AKT venues supporting EVM but not Solana, or provider software needing over 50% more work on Solana. Alpenglow, Solana's new consensus protocol, went live on mainnet on 21 October.

How the AKT migration to Solana works for holders, stakers and providers

For most holders, the move is a one-time portal swap. Self-custody holders connect a Cosmos wallet and pick a Solana address. Exchanges migrate on their own schedules, and wallets managed through Akash Console migrate automatically. A fee-payer relayer covers Solana fees, so holders do not need SOL to migrate. Staked AKT has to unbond first, which the blog says takes 21 days. ACT, Akash's compute credit, stays non-transferable, enforced through Token-2022. The portal carries per-epoch mint caps and pauses automatically on any supply mismatch.

Providers, the operators who rent out hardware, run one daemon upgrade, re-register on Solana with collateral and get re-audited. Tenants keep their deployment files unchanged. Akash lists Phantom CASH$0.9990.0%, Solflare and Ledger as supported wallets, with Keplr and Leap kept only for migration and wind-down.

The validators lose the most. "The validator role, and its income, end at halt," the blog says, with a continuity payout funded before cutover to keep the old chain running through wind-down.

Akash's planned sequence, per the blog:

• Prop 346 closes on 2 November, then SPL AKT launches after two audits.
• A provider testnet runs at least six weeks with 25 or more operators, followed by two more audit rounds and a public audit contest.
• A 14-day community dress rehearsal precedes a separate cutover vote.
• After cutover, a 90-day wind-down keeps old leases running, and the Cosmos chain halts about 13 weeks after cutover.
• Following a 12-month burn-in and a further vote, the portal and escrow core become immutable.

Some questions stay open. The blog says Akash is "still being settled" on how unvested AKT migrates and what happens to AKT not migrated within two years, and that new staking mechanisms "will be announced prior to cutover".

Portal exploits, missing slashing and no IBC: the risks in the plan

Akash's risk register starts with a migration-portal exploit, which the design answers with two audits, mint caps, an automatic pause and a bug bounty. It also flags slow exchange adoption, providers failing to re-register and a collision with Alpenglow's rollout.

The blog is candid about what Akash gives up on Solana. Akash "cannot change Solana's block times or fee markets". Economic slashing "is not live on Solana yet", with SIMD-0212 "still in governance". The blog puts Solana's validator count at "about 770 to 800". Solana has no IBC, Cosmos's native bridge standard, so Cosmos links after halt go through third-party bridges, and gas is paid in SOL rather than AKT.

Helium and Render set the DePIN migration precedent

Akash is following projects that already made this trip. "Helium is the only network to retire its own L1 into another L1 at scale, in 2023, and it is healthy three years on," the blog says. Helium Network HNT$0.388-0.4% moved its network to Solana that year, a migration its team walked through at Breakpoint 2023. Render Network RENDER$1.72+0.2% moved RENDER through an upgrade portal, which Akash calls "the closest model for ours", and Akash says Helium's migration tooling is open for reuse.

GPU networks io.net IO$0.144-0.8% and Nosana N/A$0.443-1.7% and mapping network Hivemapper HONEY$0.00170-11.1% already run on Solana, per the blog, so a move would put Akash on the same chain as two other GPU compute networks. The Akash post also describes a Cosmos ecosystem losing members: Neutron left Interchain Security, and Noble left for its own EVM chain on 18 March 2026.

The decision has been a year in the making. The Block reported in October 2025 that Akash would deprecate its Cosmos SDK chain, with Osuri calling Solana a "strong contender". Akash's blog says the Solana Foundation answered the request with funding and audit support, a gas subsidy design and a phased plan, without saying how much.

The official Akash account framed the vote that way at 15:18 UTC on 26 October: "The Akash core team believes our next chapter is on Solana, where the DePIN movement thrives. This is your network, so you decide."

Next steps after the 2 November result: audits, SPL AKT launch and cutover

The formal result of Prop 346 lands at 15:02 UTC on 2 November. If it passes, the next markers are the two token audits, an SPL AKT launch date announced through Akash's own channels, the provider testnet and, later, the separate cutover proposal that actually moves the marketplace. For Solana, the fee income is tiny. If the cutover happens, Solana gains an established compute marketplace, with its providers and tenants on the same chain as Helium, Render and io.net.