Anza has told Solana mainnet validators to upgrade to Agave 4.4.1 now or be forked off at epoch 1079. That epoch is estimated to begin at about 13:30 UTC on Friday 6 November 2026. "URGENT UPGRADE to Agave 4.4.1 is recommended or you will be forked off," Anza wrote in its post to mainnet-beta validators at 19:20 UTC on Thursday 5 November. Operators on Firedancer, the validator client built by Jump Crypto, need Firedancer v26.10.6 instead.
That leaves operators of both clients about 18 hours between Anza's post and the estimated start of epoch 1079. Anza's instruction to them was short: "Upgrade now and monitor your node."
What Agave 4.4.1 changes: a size floor for loader-v3 ProgramData accounts
Agave 4.4.1 sets a minimum size that loader-v3 ProgramData accounts count for when a transaction loads them. Anza's post describes it as applying "a minimum loaded data size to loader-v3 ProgramData accounts." Loader-v3 is Solana's upgradeable program loader, which keeps each upgradeable program's executable code in a separate ProgramData account, and Solana caps how much account data a single transaction may load.
The fix went from merge to release in a single day. The original change, pull request #16769, was merged on 5 November 2026 with backports to the v4.4 and v4.5 branches. Its v4.4 backport, #16775, merged the same day and adds support for a feature named loaderv3_programdata_size_floor. The Agave v4.4.1 release, published later the same day, is labelled a stable release recommended for general adoption on mainnet-beta, testnet and devnet.
The other changes in 4.4.1 are build and CI housekeeping, including two RUSTSEC advisories (for the libz-sys and pulldown-cmark dependencies) added to the dependency audit's ignore list. Those entries change the audit configuration, not the validator's code.
Epoch 1079 deadline: Agave 4.4.1 or Firedancer v26.10.6 for staked and unstaked nodes
The epoch 1079 requirement covers unstaked nodes as well as voting validators. "All Solana mainnet staked and unstaked validators must upgrade to Agave v4.4.1 or Firedancer v26.10.6 before epoch 1079 begins (estimated Nov 6 at 13:30 UTC)," the Solana Status account posted at 19:28 UTC, adding that feature gate 8whkDenELnfwYLirBc4Wb4H2Z1z5K7tiykpdxJS7cWg1 "is planned to be activated at that epoch boundary." Unstaked nodes include the RPC servers that wallets and apps read from.
The Firedancer v26.10.6 release, described as "a mainnet ready release", adds support for loaderv3_programdata_size_floor, so operators of both clients had a patched build on 5 November.
A feature gate is the switch Solana uses to turn on a rule change for the whole network at an epoch boundary. Once it flips, nodes running the patch apply the new ProgramData accounting and nodes without it do not, so the two groups can reach different results on the same transactions. That split is what Anza means when it says nodes without the patch "are planned to fork off": an unpatched node stops following the chain the rest of the network agrees on.
Solana Compass epoch data supports the timing. Epoch 1078 started at 11:54 UTC on 5 November, and epochs 1076 and 1077 each lasted about 25.7 hours, which puts the epoch 1079 boundary around 13:30 UTC on 6 November. At 20:22 UTC on 5 November, epoch 1078 was 32.7% complete with about 17 hours to run, according to our epoch tracker.
What forking off means for SOL stakers and validator rewards
A validator that forks off at epoch 1079 drops out of the consensus the rest of the network follows, so its votes stop counting toward rewards and delegated SOL on it stops earning until the operator upgrades and rejoins. At the start of epoch 1078, about 432 million SOL of active stake was spread across 694 validators, according to Solana Compass network stake data, and the upgrade call applies to all of them. Delegators can check how their validator is performing on Solana Compass around the boundary.
The deadline comes a week after Anza recommended Agave v4.4.0 for general adoption on 30 October, three days ahead of its schedule. Agave 4.4.1 is a point release on that same v4.4 line, so operators who moved to 4.4.0 last week are one patch version away.
The things to watch at the epoch 1079 boundary are confirmation from Anza or Solana Status that the gate activated, and whether delinquent stake or skipped slots rise as the epoch turns over.
