Solana Launches First Feature Gate and Unlocks Powerful 90% Storage Cut

Solana activated the first of five feature gates that will reduce on-chain storage costs by 90% for token accounts, as confirmed by the Solana Foundation.

The reform, driven by proposal SIMD-0437 drafted by Igor Durovic of Anza, aims to lower the lamports_per_byte constant from 6,960 to 696 gradually, with each stage activated independently based on monitoring of the network’s state growth.

The impact of the reform is measured in the minimum deposit required to open a standard SPL token account: today it amounts to $0.159 and will drop to $0.0159 once all five stages are completed. At scale, a payments company managing one million accounts would go from committing $159,000 to just $15,900 in initial capital. It should be noted that this deposit is not a fee: it is a refundable bond that is recovered upon closing the account.

Solana is consolidating its position as a stablecoin settlement network. Brands such as PayPal, Western Union, and Fiserv have begun operating on it. Payment volume on the network grew 755.3% in 2025.

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