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- Solana may raise its CU limit from 48M to 60M to boost block capacity and network throughput.
- Proposals focus only on Max Block Units, keeping all other network parameters unchanged.
- A phased rollout with SIMD-0207 first allows testing before adopting the more aggressive SIMD-0256.
The Solana community is currently debating over the proposals aimed at growing the network’s Compute Unit (CU) limit, which can be compared to the gas mechanism in Ethereum. CUs restrict the number of operations and provide protection of the blockchain functionality. As of now, the maximum possible cap is fixed at 48 million in a block. However, there are more recent proposals to raise it to 50 million or 60 million CUs.
Two proposals are now under the consideration. While SIMD-0207 was proposing slightly above 50 million CUs, SIMD-0256 is much more radical in proposing 60 million CUs. Having the same goals of increasing the block size to accommodate more transactions without affecting other parameters.
Boosting Network Throughput
These propositions only propose increasing the Max Block Units. Thus, Max Writable Account Units still stands at 12M, Max Vote Units at 36M and Max Block Accounts Data Size Delta at 100 MB.
Of all the proposed solutions to increase the current throughput levels. While according to report, increasing the Max Block Units also offers a good solution. It enables the verification of more non-voting transmissions per segment to execute while keeping up Solana’s elevated speed structure. This may increase value added without compromising the impracticality of extensions to validators, or fundamental aspects of the architecture.
Plans of action shall begin with SIMD-0207, then proceed with SIMD-0256 to make sure that it would be effective. A smaller increase is also useful to evaluate the performance. However, to look for discrepancies and to validate assumptions, which were very useful when preparing the proposal. If such transition is done then a new higher 60 million CU limit will be implemented.
Solana Scalability Trade-Offs
A few possibilities were addressed in discussions. This would restrict the possible increase in the speed of the operations and not fully utilize the potential of 48 million CU. However, the leap to 96 million CUs was considered by some as aggressive and may involve high risk to the turbine protocol and the existing structures.
If the CU limit is increased the number of transactions to be handled in each block will be more and therefore scaling up of the proposed system will be possible. Nevertheless, it can have higher performing times and maybe incompatible with the old nodes which can fail to acknowledge the new block formats. Solana’s developers & the community still have a long way to go in the journey to dawn of scalability.
