Daily Crypto Briefs 
CASABLANCA, July 28, 2026
Solana is scheduled to raise the maximum compute budget of each mainnet block from 60 million to 100 million units on July 29, a 66% capacity increase that its developers say will add room for trading and payments when demand spikes, as SOL traded near $73.21.
The planned change, known as 100M CU Blocks, affects the total work a block producer can include in a block rather than the size of any individual wallet balance or token supply. It is a performance upgrade to Solana’s transaction-processing layer, with activation set through a mainnet feature gate.
CoinGecko listed SOL at $73.21 on July 28, up 4.1% over 24 hours but down 3.6% over 30 days. The token had a market capitalization of about $43.23 billion and 24-hour spot volume near $1.75 billion; those market figures do not measure demand for the incoming upgrade itself.
In its official upgrade notice, the Solana Foundation said the new limit is already active on testnet and devnet and that the mainnet feature gate is expected July 29. The notice says compute units measure the work performed by transactions and that the larger ceiling allows more work in each block without requiring applications to change how they are built.
The rollout arrives about a year after Solana moved to the 60 million-unit limit on July 22, 2025. The foundation said 11.2% of blocks since then have used at least 56 million units, suggesting that capacity pressure has appeared in bursts rather than as a constant network condition.
The practical effect will be judged in live conditions. More block headroom can help transactions compete less fiercely during heavy activity, but it does not guarantee lower fees, faster inclusion or better execution for every application.
Solana
SOLSolana’s 100M CU Upgrade Is Scheduled for July 29
The increase concerns a block-wide compute ceiling. A leader currently can pack up to 60 million compute units into a block; after activation, the ceiling is meant to be 100 million. Solana says the change is defined in SIMD-0286, a proposal authored by Jito Labs.
Compute units are Solana’s measure of program execution. A token swap, a transfer and a complex application call all consume some amount, while the block limit determines the combined quantity of work that can settle in one slot.
The upgrade does not lift every guardrail. Solana’s notice says the maximum writable-account compute limit remains at 12 million units, and the maximum accounts-data-size delta remains at 100MB. In other words, the network is raising aggregate block capacity while retaining two limits aimed at narrower resource demands.
The feature gate is second in the pending mainnet activation queue, according to the network-upgrades hub. Solana says gates activate one per epoch and an epoch lasts roughly two days, which places the expected date on July 29; the actual activation still depends on that queue completing as expected.
For users, this is different from a new exchange listing or a change to SOL’s token economics. The upgrade does not alter token issuance, staking rewards or a wallet’s transaction limits. It changes the amount of compute that can be accommodated collectively when a block is assembled.
Full-Block Data Drives Solana’s Capacity Case
Solana said the prior 60 million-unit limit was reached closely enough to matter in 11.2% of produced blocks, using 56 million units or more. That is roughly one block in nine during the past year, with the pressure concentrated during volatile periods when traders and applications have the greatest reason to seek blockspace.
The foundation says a smaller move to 80 million units was considered before the full 100 million-unit increase was selected. Its rationale is that the new level gives the network room for the same bursty demand without forcing transactions to compete for almost-full blocks at the moments users most need to transact.
That distinction matters for onchain markets. A platform can advertise high theoretical capacity, but traders and payment users experience the network through confirmation reliability, priority fees and whether a transaction lands during a sharp market move. Daily Crypto Briefs recently covered Kraken’s expansion to more than 2,500 Solana tokens, an example of how a larger token ecosystem can increase the value of dependable network access without proving that every transaction will settle cheaply.
The proposal also follows broader work on Solana’s operating stack. Solana says the 100 million-unit change is possible because network propagation improved first, including kernel-bypass XDP networking available in Agave 4.0.0 and later, and enabled by default in Firedancer. The foundation said more than 70% of mainnet stake has enabled XDP.
Those readiness statements are the foundation’s assessment, not an independent performance audit. Larger blocks require more data to reach validators every slot, so propagation times, missed slots and application behavior after activation will be more useful evidence than the announced ceiling alone.
Validator Propagation Is the Main Post-Upgrade Test
Solana says current mainnet traffic is not generally constrained by block execution time, which is why it expects the network to retain 400-millisecond block times at the higher limit. The stated goal is added headroom, not a promised doubling of transaction speed.
For validators, the feature-page lists no breaking change and no indexing changes required. That does not remove the need for operators to track client versions, hardware load and propagation as the first larger blocks move across the network.
The development fits a wider push to make public-chain infrastructure usable for high-frequency applications. Solana’s recent tokenized-equities growth has increased the relevance of reliable blockspace for assets and trading flows that may be time-sensitive, although that market data does not establish a causal link to the pending upgrade.
Sentiment across crypto remained guarded. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index was at 29, or Fear, on July 28, a broad market gauge that does not predict Solana network performance.
Fear & Greed Index
July 28, 2026The immediate checkpoint is the scheduled July 29 activation. Afterward, users and operators can examine block-compute usage, transaction inclusion during busy windows, priority fees, propagation and any client issues; Solana has not published a single metric that would by itself determine whether the capacity increase succeeded.
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Primary sources and further reading
| Source | Title |
|---|---|
| | Solana: 100M CU Blocks upgrade page |
| | Solana: network upgrades hub |
| | SIMD-0286: Increase Block Limits to 100M CUs |
| | CoinGecko: Solana price and market data |
| | CoinGecko: Solana historical price data |
| | Alternative.me: Crypto Fear and Greed Index |
Fact-checked by: Daily Crypto Briefs Fact-Check Desk
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Frequently Asked Questions
When will Solana activate 100 million compute-unit blocks?
Solana says the 100 million compute-unit block limit is scheduled to activate on mainnet July 29, 2026. The timing follows its feature-gate queue and could move if the queue changes before activation.
How much does Solana's block capacity increase?
The maximum block compute limit will rise from 60 million to 100 million compute units, a 66% increase. Solana says this adds room for more transaction work in a block without changing the 12 million writable-account limit or 100MB accounts-data-size limit.
Does the Solana 100M CU change raise every transaction limit?
No. The upgrade raises the aggregate compute budget for a whole block. It does not change the per-writable-account compute limit or the block accounts-data-size limit, according to Solana's upgrade documentation.
What should Solana users and validators watch after the upgrade?
Users should watch transaction inclusion and fees during busy periods. Validators and infrastructure operators should watch block propagation, software compatibility and network performance; Solana says the change is not a breaking change and does not require indexing changes.