Solana's 90% Rent Cut: The Economics of SIMD-0437
Originally published on xroot.dev . Every account on Solana carries a refundable SOL deposit — and the network just cut the price of that deposit by 90%. SIMD-0437, shipping with Agave 4.2, is being covered as "Solana gets cheaper". That is true, and it matters for anyone creating accounts at scale. But the more interesting consequence runs the other way: because the change is strictly a…
Solana is cutting the cost of creating accounts by 90%, thanks to the SIMD-0437 update. This change, which went live with the Agave 4.2 update, reduces the lamports per byte from 6,960 to just 696. The reduction happens in five steps, with the final rate hitting 696 lamports per byte, a 90% decrease from the previous rate. Opening a token account now costs about 0.0002 SOL, down from the previous 0.002 SOL.
Existing accounts, however, still retain their original deposits. This means that millions of old accounts, which were funded at the higher rate, will keep the equivalent of ~0.002 SOL on close, making them a valuable resource that won't replenish. This change also impacts airdrops and mint costs, with the cost of a 10,000 wallet airdrop dropping from ~20 SOL to ~2 SOL.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
