Solana Co-Founder Yakovenko Backs SGP-0003 Fee Vote, Calling First-Stage Rate

On August 25, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana SOL$96.93-3.5%, publicly endorsed the SGP-0003 compute unit fee proposal ahead of its governance vote, citing burn projections that put the first-stage rate in roughly the same range as what the network already burns today.

"At 1 lamport per 10 cu this seems like a no brainer yes vote," Yakovenko wrote at 22:28 UTC, pointing to the sandwiched.me/resource-fees simulation. "It's about the same total rev from the current burn, which is a small fraction of the total net rev."

The post reached 44,000 views within hours. The governance vote on SGP-0003 remains open through approximately epoch 1024, expected around August 28–29.

SGP-0003 Burn Math: Why Yakovenko Reads the First Stage as Low-Risk

SGP-0003 proposes replacing SOL's current flat 5,000-lamport base fee with a two-part structure: a 2,500-lamport inclusion fee paid to the block leader, plus a variable resource fee burned in full and computed against the compute units a transaction requests. The first-stage rate is 1 lamport per 10 CUs, the rate Yakovenko evaluated explicitly.

Today's base fee produces a daily burn of approximately 648 SOL, as Compass covered in its August 25 simulation analysis. At the 1/10 rate, projected burns rise to roughly 1,500 to 1,800 SOL per day, a step up but within the same order of magnitude. Priority fees and Jito tips, which flow to validators and block leaders rather than to the burn address, are unchanged by the proposal.

That arithmetic grounds Yakovenko's position. The additional burn at the first stage is real as a mechanism signal but modest in absolute terms. A vote for the proposal is not a vote to immediately restructure validator economics.

"At 1 lamport per 10 cu this seems like a no brainer yes vote. It's about the same total rev from the current burn, which is a small fraction of the total net rev." — Anatoly Yakovenko, August 25, 2026

The proposal also changes what gets priced. Solana today charges per signature rather than per unit of compute consumed or requested. A transaction can request the maximum compute budget, use a fraction of it, and pay the same base fee as one requesting only what it needs — while the scheduler packs blocks against requested ceilings rather than actual usage. At the 1/10 rate, over-requesting compute becomes a real financial cost, giving applications a reason to request what they plan to use, without the shock of a large fee increase at launch.

Full Scope: SGP-0003 Ballot Authorizes All Three Burn Rate Stages

Yakovenko's assessment was specific to the 1/10 rate. The vote itself authorizes the full progression: 1/10 lamports per CU, then 1/4, then 1/2. At the terminal 1/2 rate, projected daily burns reach 7,500 to 9,000 SOL, as the simulation analysis covered. A vote for SGP-0003 is a vote for that entire schedule, not just the starting point.

Analyst Mostly Data, who ran the quantitative simulation the August 25 Compass analysis reported on, replied directly to Yakovenko's thread to flag this scope: "The vote is not for 1/10, but for 1/10 to 1/2." He noted that evaluating the proposal against a narrow window of first-stage numbers does not capture the trajectory validators are actually approving.

That is an accurate description of the ballot. The later stages activate through separate feature gates rather than a second governance vote, so passing SGP-003 now covers the full schedule. Yakovenko's argument centers on the first stage as the immediate practical reference point; the validator community is weighing the full arc.

SGP-0003 Governance Vote Closes Around Epoch 1024, Requiring Two-Thirds Stake

The formal ballot on SGP-0003 opened with epoch 1021, as Compass reported when the vote went live. SGP-0003 is one of three proposals on the ballot alongside SGP-0001, the Solana Constitution, and SGP-0002, the accelerated disinflation proposal. Passing any requires a two-thirds supermajority of participating stake.

Yakovenko's public endorsement does not determine the outcome. The system is stake-weighted, and final results depend on validator participation through closing. His explicit position, citing a specific simulation tool and specific burn arithmetic, provides a concrete cost-benefit framing from the network's most prominent technical voice ahead of a deadline that falls in roughly three days.

The vote closes around epoch 1024, expected approximately August 28–29.