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.
Releases
Notable feature gates
Testnet, Devnet, Mainnet - Apply a minimum loaded data size to Loader V3 ProgramData accounts
New versions
- Agave v4.5.0-beta.0, v4.4.1
- Firedancer Testnet Release v26.11.0, Mainnet Release v26.10.8
- Solana Web3.js v3.2.1
- ed25519 Programmatic Signer Nonce Program Rust SDK v1.0.0, JS SDK v1.0.0
- Anchor v1.2.2
Ecosystem work
SIMDs
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A discussion has started about cutting vote costs in half
- WTM - The Vote Admission Ticket (VAT) is the amount of SOL paid to vote for a transaction. Recent changes to the Solana Foundation Delegation Program (SFDP) include a lower ceiling for exiting the program. This proposal would make participating in consensus less costly for validators that are starting out.
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New proposals would remove durable nonces and disable their ability to pay transaction fees
- WTM - Durable nonces let users store instructions onchain before executing them in a transaction. They have introduced security, runtime, and developer experience risks. These proposals begin the process of removing them from the protocol.
Validator clients (Agave, Firedancer, Mithril)
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Agave proposed showing a vote account’s current commission rate in RPC responses
- WTM - The
getVoteAccountsRPC method returns stake information and the onchain identity for each validator. These values typically reset each epoch when stake and rewards are recalculated. If a validator changes its commission rate during an epoch, the method currently returns the rate for the next epoch. This change would let RPC callers retrieve the current rate.
- WTM - The
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Agave proposed a new
getAgBlockFooterCertRPC method- WTM - With Alpenglow, votes are recorded in block footers instead of onchain transactions. Non-validator consumers can access this data only through RPC methods. This API would let clients retrieve the vote data in Alpenglow block footers.
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Solana CLI implemented more efficient writes of program data onchain
- WTM - Writing program data to buffer accounts is part of deploying a program onchain. The previous implementation did not pack as many bytes as possible into each account-data write. This change reimplements how Solana CLI calls BPF Loader V3 instructions, reducing the number of instructions needed to write program data.
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Mithril is improving its runtime and replay implementations and interoperability with Harmonic
- WTM - A discussion on X identified jitter in Mithril’s Replay implementation. Replay runs transactions against the current state to determine whether a block is valid and can be voted on. These changes optimize the runtime and replay services and update how Mithril interoperates with Harmonic as a scheduler.
Solana language clients (Web3.js, Solana Kit, Kit plugins, Solana SDK, Codama, Solana Go)
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Web3.js will return
getTransactionresults with additional encoding options- WTM - Helius offers a more human-readable encoding of transaction RPC responses through enhanced parsing. This change lets Web3.js return the same encoding natively.
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Solana Go is improving transaction confirmation handling and transaction introspection
- WTM - Transaction confirmation handling controls status checks and retry behavior for submitted transactions. This change stops waiting when a transaction expires so the application can continue other work. A new Go package also adds transaction introspection, allowing applications to inspect transaction data after a transaction succeeds.
Testing frameworks (Mollusk, LiteSVM, Surfpool)
- Surfpool will show the error message for custom program errors when running a transaction
- WTM - Solana programs often define custom errors for behavior not covered by software libraries. These errors usually appear as hexadecimal integers such as
0x3. This change surfaces the message that corresponds to the error code so developers do not need to look it up.
- WTM - Solana programs often define custom errors for behavior not covered by software libraries. These errors usually appear as hexadecimal integers such as
Other interesting things
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@clairefxyz released
sbpf-linker -
@0xIchigo released Watchtower, a free security monitor for Solana programs
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@Jito published a new weekly changelog
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@MetalLegBob introduced a permissionless router for bonding curves, AMMs, and launchpads
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The Solana Foundation Delegation Program announced changes
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@bencirc shared a new transaction replay implementation
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@Helius released its Privacy Rings protocol
Developer Events
- Scale or Die - November 14, 2026
- Whitepaper Reading Club: Alpenglow
Open Developer Roles
Helius
Jito