This is a weekly newsletter on the latest Solana engineering news this week. If you want to stay updated on Solana tech every week, follow Solana Changelog at @solana_devs and @readylayerone and turn on notifications.
Major Network Announcement:
Please check your applications to see if they support V1 transactions:
https://solana.com/upgrades/larger-transaction-sizes
The network has decided to delay activation to Epoch 1035 to give more time for users to prepare.
Releases
Notable feature gate activations
Mainnet
Devnet
New versions
- Agave v4.4.0-alpha.3, v4.3.0-rc.0
- Firedancer v26.09.0
- Shipstern v0.9.0
- Solana Web3.js v1.99.0, v3.0.0-rc.0
- Solana Kit v8.3.0
- Flux Solana Go v0.1.8
- Token-2022 Program v11.0.0
- Stake Pool Program v2.1.1
- Program Metadata Program JS SDK v0.9.3
- Anchor v1.2.0
- Caravel v0.6.0
Ecosystem work
SIMDs
- A new syscall was proposed to return information about the leader node on the Solana runtime
- WTM - This feature allows for market makers to adjust their quoting depending on who the leader is. It’s also a useful runtime function for other applications.
- An improvement to the leader handover procedure in Alpenglow was proposed
- WTM - This improvement ensures that leader nodes actually fit the 200ms slot time. Other validators sometimes like to pack their slots at the last minute. This change will ensure that we keep a median slot time at the target ms.
Validator clients (Agave, Firedancer, Mithril)
- Agave could move to an implementation of BLS sigverify that uses several threads to do several steps instead of doing all the steps in threads sequentially.
- WTM - This is a performance change that could possibly unblock the BLS sigverify steps. By doing it this way, no step could be a bottleneck to previous jobs being queued for execution.
- Agave’s tpu-client-next broadcasting will handle abort behavior on its broadcast behavior.
- WTM - In production, connections should have an abort handle in case there are issues where only a connection restart would resolve them. In this case, when the TLS certificate expires, an abort and renewal is necessary.
- Agave made several performance improvements to its gossip implementation
- WTM - Gossip was one of the performance bottlenecks identified in Agave early on. This service is how validators communicate with each other, which if not performant, can be a bottleneck to processing transactions.
- Agave will implement SIMD-0232 with an interface via the CLI
- WTM - The validator commission collector SIMD has been unblocked and accepted during the SIMD process. This will allow validators to get their commissions on a separate address.
RPC 2.0
- Cloudbreak is implementing getSupply
- WTM - getSupply is a part of the Solana RPC spec. Compliance with these is expected.
- Shipstern has completed its subscription request filter implementation
- WTM - Subscriptions rely on filter messages in order to control flow. If the user requests a subscription too greedily, they may receive a firehose of data they aren’t ready to process.
Solana language clients (Web3.js, Solana Kit, Kit plugins, Solana SDK, Codama, Solana Go)
- Solana Web3.js is proposing to add the @solana/wallet-adapter
- WTM - Solana Wallet Adapter is tied closely to Solana Kit at the moment. Allowing Web3.js to interface with it keeps it compatible with the latest tooling. Initially, it was only in sync with the old version of the Wallet adapter.
- Solana Kit is adding a new method to create a keypair signer from raw byte inputs
- WTM - This is a new functionality that completes creation of keypairs based on bytes. Wallets might use this because they store the keypair bytes in memory.
- Foundation’s Solana Go will allow for an API to add confidential transaction instructions
- WTM - Solana interfaces are expected to support confidential transfers. This keeps Solana Go in line with that implementation.
- Flux’s Solana Go has added the Memo program WTM - Solana interfaces are expected to support the Memo program. This keeps Flux’s Solana Go in line with that implementation.
- The Solana Wallet Standard will allow wallets to advertise their support for V1 transactions
- WTM - In line with the big push for V1 transactions, the Solana Wallet Standard will enable wallets to tell applications what transaction versions they support.
Solana program frameworks (Anchor, Pinocchio, Steel, Quasar)
- Anchor will rewrite its provider in @solana/kit
- WTM - The Anchor provider is tied to Web3.js. Kit is the newer web interface and Anchor is taking an opinionated stance to move over.
- Caravel will support sbpfv3
- WTM - sbpfV3 is the new bytecode format supported on Solana programs. Caravel is keeping up with the other program frameworks.
Testing frameworks (mollusk, litesvm, surfpool)
- Surfpool will support historical forks
- WTM - This is in line with supporting scenarios on Surfpool. Several other solutions have been proposed outside this project, but a testing environment supporting this benefits users who want their contracts to be better prepared.
Other interesting things
- @deanmlittle from @blueshift has given a talk at Rustconf 2026 about the Rust Compiler https://x.com/dhkleung/status/2097684480995790910?s=20
- @Certora has launched an autofuzzer tool https://x.com/certora/status/2097387302771167320?s=46
- @L0STE_ from @blueshift has released an implementation of cryptographic VRF functions for Solana https://x.com/L0STE_/status/2097350785130512547?s=20
- @zbr0wn will give a talk on wincode in Rustconf 2026 https://x.com/readylayerone/status/2097114887935926479?s=20
- @m_a_zeeshan created a crate that will interface with Temporal’s Nozomi https://github.com/alizeeshan1234/nozomi-rs
- @cavemanloverboy with an interesting liquidity finding in Kamino’s liquidity pools https://x.com/cavemanloverboy/status/2096607832434987018?s=20
- @vyralabs with their second-month notes on operating a validator https://x.com/vyralabshq/status/2096562263188746532?s=46
- @alessandrorod on seeing how programs perform on Solana https://x.com/alessandrod/status/2096526742181876204?s=46
- @immaterial_ink is doing a private beta of a new data querying service called sqlana.xyz https://x.com/immaterial_ink/status/2096023783354011864?s=20
- @avhidotsol creates a multisig program written in pinocchio https://x.com/avhidotsol/status/2095853627785240653?s=20
- @a_milz on how to reclaim rent from the rent reduction https://x.com/a_milz/status/2095532192579661927?s=46
- @anza_xyz has written a full-length article on wincode https://x.com/anza_xyz/status/2095611874142548262?s=46
