Solana's First Rent Reduction Goes Live on Testnet Under SIMD-0437, Targeting 90% Cut in Five Steps

The first step of SIMD-0437 activated on Solana Solana SOL$103.59-2.6% testnet on August 27, beginning a five-phase rollout that targets a 90% reduction in on-chain storage costs. Once all five steps complete, the rent-exempt deposit on a standard token account falls from roughly $0.16 to $0.016.

The proposal was authored by Igor Durovic of Anza Anza, the core engineering team behind the Agave validator client. It supersedes SIMD-0436, an earlier proposal that would have implemented a simpler 50% one-step cut, replacing it with a more granular schedule designed for incremental observation of network effects.

Why Solana's Rent Constant Is Being Reduced

On Solana, rent functions as a refundable deposit rather than a recurring fee. Every account on the network must maintain a minimum lamport balance proportional to its data size in bytes. Accounts that hold at least this minimum are rent-exempt and persist indefinitely; that balance is recoverable in full when an account is closed.

The minimum balance formula is: min_balance = (128 + data_size_bytes) x lamports_per_byte. The lamports_per_byte constant has held at 6,960 since the network's early days. As SOL appreciated in price, that fixed constant translated into higher real-dollar costs for every account on the network, without a corresponding increase in the underlying resource cost of storage.

The SIMD-0437 proposal document puts it plainly: "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."

Five Feature Gates, One 90% Cut: The SIMD-0437 Schedule

The proposal reduces lamports_per_byte across five independent feature gates, each requiring separate activation. Core developers evaluate state growth data at each stage before proceeding to the next:

• Step 1: 6,960 to 6,333 lamports/byte (9% reduction from baseline)
• Step 2: 6,960 to 5,080 (27% cumulative)
• Step 3: 6,960 to 2,575 (63% cumulative)
• Step 4: 6,960 to 1,322 (81% cumulative)
• Step 5: 6,960 to 696 (90% cumulative, final target)

Step 1 is now live on testnet. Mainnet activation, via the Agave 4.2 release, is targeted for August 2026.

Token Account Costs From $0.16 to $0.016: Who Benefits

The dollar impact is largest once all five steps complete. At the current 6,960 lamports/byte constant, the rent-exempt minimum for a standard SPL token account sits at roughly 0.002 SOL, worth about $0.16 at current prices. After Step 5, the same account requires about $0.016 to keep open.

At scale, the difference compounds. Onboarding 1 million users, each with a new token account, currently locks approximately $160,000 worth of SOL in rent deposits; at the final rate, the same campaign requires roughly $16,000, according to CryptoBriefing. Consumer applications, NFT platforms, and gaming projects that create accounts at high volume carry the highest direct benefit.

Existing accounts are not disrupted. Once each step activates on mainnet, holders can voluntarily reduce their deposited balance to the new lower minimum and reclaim the difference.

Developers should stop hardcoding lamport or rent values in programs. Because the constant changes at each of the five activations, applications must call the getMinimumBalanceForRentExemption RPC method at runtime to fetch the current minimum.

A Built-In Fallback If State Growth Accelerates

A sixth feature gate in SIMD-0437 can revert the constant back to 6,960 if unexpected state bloat appears at any stage. The proposal was also drafted alongside SIMD-0392, which creates a mechanism for future rent increases if economics require them.

The five-step structure reflects a deliberate choice to observe how the network responds before committing to the full reduction. Its risk model, described in the proposal as "risk-based advancement", ensures no step proceeds until the prior one's data supports moving forward.