Jump Crypto’s Firedancer team has proposed uncapping Solana’s block compute unit limit following the upcoming Alpenglow upgrade that is set to begin testing later in the year.

The proposal, known as SIMD-0370, aims to remove the fixed block capacity limit to allow block sizes to scale dynamically based on validator performance.

Validators would be able to skip blocks they cannot process within the allotted time, enabling higher-performance validators to produce larger blocks with more transactions. 

Essentially, it would create incentives for validators to upgrade their hardware and software and allow network transaction capacity to grow along with hardware improvements and market demand.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

However, some members of the Solana developer community warned that removing the compute unit cap could introduce centralization risks and stability challenges.

They argued that higher-performing validators with expensive hardware might dominate the network, potentially marginalizing smaller validators.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko also questioned validator incentives “to increase hardware to support some crazy leaders big block.” He argued that they were more likely to “fail it and steal all the MEV [maximal extractable value].”