Solana validators to get more SOL as fee proposal passes in favor

• Solana validators will receive 100% of priority fees from transactions following a governance vote, aiming to improve network security and efficiency.

• The previous model split priority fees between burning and rewarding validators, which led to side deals with transaction submitters.

Solana validators are set to get a little more SOL tokens after a governance proposal to give them 100% of priority fees was passed late Monday with 77% in favor, governance data shows.

Validators are important participants in a blockchain network as they run software to confirm transactions and maintain security. Solana priority fees are additional fees users can pay to increase the likelihood of their transactions being processed more quickly by the network.

In the previous model, half of the fees in a priority transaction were erased while the other half went to the validators. This created a situation where validators were said to be making “side deals” with transaction submitters to get more SOL, as per proposal creator tao-stones on the Solana governance forum.

Giving all the priority fees to the validators would ensure that validators are more focused on keeping the network safe and running smoothly, tao-stones said.

The proposal is part of Solana Improvement Document number 96 (SIMD-0096) and has now been put into action with a feature called "Reward full priority fee to validators #34731.

SOL is up 1.6% in the past 24 hours, trading at $166 in Asian afternoon hours on Tuesday, as per CoinGecko.