Kraken's Last-Minute Vote Switch Pushes Solana (SOL) Disinflation Proposal Past 67%

Kraken Validator Flips Vote in Final Minutes

Solana's first-ever network-wide governance vote ended in a photo finish on Friday, as SGP-0002 — the measure to double the pace at which new SOL issuance is cut — cleared the two-thirds majority requirement in the closing minutes. The switch that decided it came from Kraken 2, a validator linked to the exchange of the same name that carried roughly 2% of all votes cast and reversed its ballot from “against” to “for” as the deadline approached. On-chain voting data shows the yes camp remained below the required tally even an hour before close, with several large delegates changing positions in the final stretch.

The proposal finished with 67% support, barely above the threshold, while roughly 25% voted against and 7.84% abstained. Earlier in the session, support had stood at 65.15% — equivalent to about 169.91 million SOL in stake — with 25.39% opposed and 9.47% abstaining. Turnout reached 60.7% of eligible stake, comfortably above the one-third quorum needed to validate the result. Mert Mumtaz, chief executive of infrastructure firm Helius and one of the measure's most vocal backers, wrote on X that after roughly 500 calls in the final hours, the votes landed in the last seconds and passed by a “literal hair.” SOL briefly bounced as the tally tightened but held below Thursday's high. Unlike routine parameter changes, the measure directly shapes the supply curve that determines how much new SOL enters circulation each year — a question the network had never before put to a formal validator vote. The vote marked the inaugural run of Solana's decentralized governance framework, which placed three proposals before Solana network validators covering how the blockchain makes decisions and how its token economics should work.

What SGP-0002 Changes for SOL Supply

At its core, SGP-0002 lifts the annual rate of decline in Solana's inflation from 15% to 30%, sharply restricting growth in circulating supply. Backers projected the change would remove 18.9 million SOL from future issuance and pull the network's terminal inflation rate down to 1.5% as early as 2029 — a meaningful reset for the supply side of Solana's market cap equation, and the crux of a debate over how quickly the network should shed its inflationary subsidies.

Kraken's reversal was pivotal. The exchange controlled a delegation pool of 8.92 million SOL and initially opposed the reform alongside Figment, Everstake and P2P.org, a bloc whose stated rationale was preserving staking yields — a concern the disinflation schedule touches directly, since lower issuance means thinner validator and delegator rewards. As retail criticism mounted, however, the exchange formally switched to yes, reshaping the balance between major validators and the wider community minutes before voting ended.

The other two measures split the ballot. SGP-0001, effectively a constitution for future governance that sets participation requirements, vote weighting and approval thresholds, passed comfortably with 95.35% support and just 0.22% opposed. SGP-0003, which proposed steeper transaction-fee burns of up to 9,000 SOL per day, failed with roughly 54% support after several of the largest validators abstained in a bloc. During that fight, Mumtaz publicly urged Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko to help mobilize the remaining validators — a sign of how much of the campaign ran on direct outreach rather than formal debate. Passage does not immediately change the chain. The referendum functions as a political mandate only: the new economics take effect once the SIMD-0550 software update ships, a process expected to require at least 4.5 months of coordination among validator operators. We examined the supply math behind that update in our earlier coverage of the SIMD-0550 vote to cut $1.5B in issuance. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

SIMD-0550 Road Ahead

Our reading of the on-chain vote record confirms the shape of the outcome: 67% approval on 60.7% turnout against a one-third quorum — a mandate secured by the thinnest of margins, and one that binds validators politically rather than technically. Among large-cap altcoin networks, few have put their own issuance schedule to a direct vote, and the recorded result now stands as precedent for how future Solana economic proposals will be fought. Until SIMD-0550 ships, issuance follows the existing schedule, leaving opponents a window to regroup. Investors weighing exposure can follow the practical steps in our guide on how to buy Solana in 2026. SOL changed hands about 3.2% lower over the past 24 hours, a modest pullback suggesting markets view the result as an incremental supply adjustment rather than a shock.