Since early July 2026, Solana validators receive 100% of priority fees, a shift from the previous system where half of these fees were burned. This change came after the SIMD-0096 vote, marking a clear move to increase validator rewards during network congestion.
Under the current fee model, every transaction pays a base fee split evenly: 50% is burned and 50% goes to the block producer. Priority fees, which users add to speed up transactions, are now fully allocated to validators, boosting their direct revenue.
The network’s on-chain governance, which launched recently, allows the community to propose and approve such protocol changes, but only if a proposer stakes at least 100,000 SOL. This high threshold aims to ensure serious proposals and prevent spam.
Before this update, priority fees were burned partially, limiting incentives for validators during peak demand. Now, with all priority fees going to block producers, validators have stronger motivation to prioritize high-fee transactions, potentially improving network responsiveness.
Users can set a compute-unit price as a priority tip, which directly translates into higher fees for validators without any portion being burned. This means that transactions requiring more computational resources can command larger tips, fueling validator earnings further.
As the base fee split remains under discussion, the community’s next major vote might reshape how fees balance between burning tokens and rewarding validators. For now, the July change marks a significant shift in Solana’s fee economics.
