The SIMD-0096 Proposal (here’s what that means)

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Here’s one of those ‘only in Web3’ moments.

The SIMD-0096 proposal was just approved.

(Sounds dry, but hear us out)!

Similar to classic payment processors (Stripe, Square etc.), when transacting in crypto, you’ll usually pay a fee.

For a blockchain like Solana, the normal fee is pretty cheap, but imagine if there was an NFT that you realllly wanted, and right at that moment there were thousands of other people who were transacting on Solana?

In that case, chances are, the network will be clogged up, and you’ll have to wait ages before the transaction completes.

So, instead of waiting at the back of the line, you can pay a ‘priority fee’ to give you a Disneyland fast pass right to the front of the queue.

With the SIMD-0096 proposal that was just approved (with 77.77% voting in favour), it means that Solana validators will get 100% of those priority fees (up from 50%).

While a 77.77% approval vote is high, it doesn’t come without controversy.

Previously, 50% of priority fees were sent directly to validators and the other 50% was burned (destroyed forever).

Those against the proposal say that it will make Solana more inflationary without the inbuilt burning mechanism.

But, some folks much wiser than us have done the math, and turns out it won’t have much of an inflationary impact, if at all.

Either way, how cool is it that the Solana community (the voters) could choose the path for how validators are rewarded?

Only in Web3.