SIMD-0370: Solana’s Firedancer Proposes Removing 60M CU Block Cap After Alpenglow to Push Validator Hardware Upgrades

Jump Crypto’s Firedancer team has formally proposed a change to Solana‘s block processing model, targeting the network’s current compute units cap to enable dynamic block sizing based on validator throughput, according to a report by The Block.

The SIMD-0370 specification recommends removing the existing 60 million CU per-block limit after the planned Alpenglow upgrade later this year, replacing a fixed ceiling with performance-dependent scaling to better accommodate high-throughput transaction batches without altering protocol consensus rules.

Proponents say the change would create commercial incentives for validators to upgrade hardware, as nodes with lower performance would simply forgo oversized blocks, potentially improving overall network throughput while preserving validator decentralization.