SIMD-0550 to double Solana's disinflation is rebuilt on the integer schedule
Victoria Shinder2 min readSIMD-0550, a proposal from two Helius contributors to slow SOL issuance faster, was revised on 29 October to sit on top of the network's new integer inflation schedule. The change, merged as pull request #704, rewrote the detailed design of the document; its status remains Review.
The idea is simple: raise Solana's annual disinflation rate from 15% to 30%. The proposal describes itself as a simpler successor to SIMD-0228, the market-based inflation mechanism that failed to reach quorum, and as a revival of an earlier submission, SIMD-0411. By its authors' estimate, doubling the rate shortens the path to the terminal emissions rate from about 5.7 years to about 2.8, and cuts issuance by roughly 18.9 million SOL over six years, about 2.6% below the current schedule. With 41% of validators already charging zero commission on emissions, they argue, most would see little change in revenue.
The revision specifies the mechanics. A feature gate, double_disinflation_rate, can only activate after SIMD-0607's integer schedule. At the activation slot, clients compute an anchor rate using the existing 15% taper, then apply the 30% taper from that anchor, so the inflation rate is unchanged at the moment of switch and nothing is applied retroactively. The new schedule governs rewards from the epoch after activation. The stored inflation governor keeps an initial rate of 0.08 and changes its taper to 0.30. Because rewards feed into bank hashes, the gate must stay in the client permanently so that anyone replaying from genesis reaches the same state.
What it means
The rewrite turns a one-line economic proposal into something client teams can implement identically, which is the precondition for a vote. It does not settle the politics that sank SIMD-0228. Holders and stakers would see slower dilution; validators that still take commission on inflation rewards are the group whose income changes most.