Solana’s core development team, Anza, said the first of five feature gates has gone live as part of a plan to cut on-chain storage costs by 90%. The change is expected to benefit stablecoin and payments businesses, which have become one of the network’s fastest-growing use cases.

For developers creating token accounts at scale, and for the users they onboard, the update lowers a fixed capital cost that has remained unchanged for years.

The timing is significant. Over the past year, Solana has been positioning itself as a settlement rail rather than solely a venue for speculation. Rent remains one of the main obstacles to mass account creation, and lower account costs could make it more practical for fintech companies and wallets to cover deposits for their users.

Solana starts phased cut to token account costs

SIMD-0437, a proposal written by Igor Durovic of Anza, leads the reform. It reduces a constant called lamports_per_byte, which sets the minimum balance an account must maintain, from 6,960 to 696.

According to the Solana Foundation’s upgrade page, the constant was established many years ago and has not changed since. Rather than reflecting the actual storage cost incurred by validators, the storage price increased automatically along with the value of SOL.

The reduction will be rolled out across five gates: first from 6,960 to 6,333, then from 6,333 to 5,080, followed by 2,575, 1,322, and finally 696. The testnet activation occurs at the first gate, representing a reduction of about 9%.

The remaining gates will be activated separately, depending on state-growth data provided by the core development team, which keeps the change tied to network conditions rather than applying the full adjustment at once.

Why the deposit math matters for payments

Rent on Solana is not a fee. The Foundation describes it as a fully refundable bond that is returned when an account is closed. SIMD-0437 changes the amount of the upfront deposit.

Before the upgrade, the rent-exempt deposit for a standard SPL token account was $0.159. After all five gates are activated, it will fall to $0.0159, or one-tenth of the previous amount.

At scale, the savings are substantial. Based on Solana Foundation estimates, a payments company that needed to create one million token accounts would pay $159,000 today and $15,900 after the full reduction. That difference can determine whether a business can afford to create accounts for large numbers of users.

Cryptopolitan has reported that payment volume on Solana rose by 755.3% in 2025, establishing the network as a settlement layer for stablecoins issued by brands including Western Union, PayPal, and Fiserv. Lower rent deposits directly support that trend by reducing the cost of onboarding each new payment user to the chain.

Safeguards against state bloat

The phased rollout is intended to reduce the risk that cheaper storage will drive a surge in on-chain state, which every validator must store and index.

A sixth feature gate can restore the constant to 6,960 if problems arise. A companion proposal, SIMD-0392, also allows rent to be raised again later without disrupting existing accounts.

The reduction is supported by published analysis from Solana Foundation data researcher Umberto Natale. His model found that even after a tenfold cut, a state-bloat attack designed to exhaust current storage headroom would still require roughly $17.2 million in locked capital. He concluded that the 90% reduction does not create a systemic risk to the cluster.

Where the rollout goes from here

The rent reduction ships with Agave 4.2, Anza’s validator release recommended for mainnet in August 2026. The release also includes larger 4,096-byte transactions and slot times cut in half to 200 milliseconds.

According to the Foundation, mainnet feature activations for the release began in the week of August 17. Existing accounts continue to work unchanged and can simply reduce their balances to the new minimum.

The next step is straightforward: the four remaining gates must clear their risk reviews before Solana’s full 90% rent reduction reaches mainnet.

The 90% figure refers to the fully completed rollout, not an immediate cut. Each feature gate is independent, allowing Solana developers to monitor state growth before moving to the next reduction. The Foundation also describes a sixth fallback gate that can restore the original 6,960 value if problems emerge.

The Solana Foundation’s example uses $0.159 per standard SPL token account, falling to $0.0159 after the full 10x reduction. For one million accounts, that equals $159,000 versus $15,900.

This is a refundable rent-exempt deposit, not a transaction fee. The SOL remains locked while the account exists and can be recovered when the account is closed.