Solana Labs made an announcement on May 30th about the adoption of the v1.14 upgrade by the network’s validators. This upgrade, introduced by the layer-1 blockchain, aims to improve the efficiency of hosting decentralized apps and enhance staking mechanisms.
In this article, we are going to find out what exactly the update is and how it is supposed to change the blockchain’s work.
What is Solana’s v.1.14 update?
The upgrade was announced in the community at the beginning of May 2023 and it has been tested since March. At first, the development team asked some volunteers to upgrade the validator client to run tests. On May, 22, it was recommended to all validators as well as RPC nodes to upgrade. Though it was not obligatory, in just a few days, over 97% of the users followed the recommendation, according to the team.
The v1.14 update involves the following changes:
- Developers constructing dApps on Solana will now have access to up-to-date transaction fees and can utilize this information for more accurate transaction estimation. Furthermore, the upgrade opens doors for developers to benefit from localized fee markets in the future.
- The upgrade enables the permissionless removal of delinquent stake, which addresses the issue of block skipping that adversely impacts the performance of the Solana blockchain.
- Significant improvements have been made to the efficiency, affordability, and reliability of information storage in the bank’s stake cache. Notably, the cache is now employed in the distribution process of inflationary rewards.
- The voting system has undergone simplification by reducing the required verification steps. Presently, the only necessary operation is confirming the legitimacy of transitioning from an old to a new state.
- Furthermore, Solana’s Turbine, responsible for dividing blocks into smaller shreds of data, will become more dynamic, resulting in enhanced platform efficiency.
These changes did not come into force immediately, the team is going to introduce them gradually. The community seems to have welcomed the upgrade, with some users hoping that it will lead to Solana never experiencing downtime.
The upgrade and the SOL price
Solana trade in terms of volume has not gone through any major changes since the update was announced. The project’s native cryptocurrency SOL which took a major hit in November 2022 after the FTX-related events has not yet returned to the price points prior to that time.
At the same time, the last week of May 2023 has definitely brought bullish sentiment with the token’s price growing from $19.09 on May, 24 to $21.38 on May, 30.
The recent bullish sentiment surrounding Solana has sparked increased interest in the cryptocurrency, leading to a surge in trading activity on the Solana crypto exchange, with many investors looking to swap SOL to USD to capitalize on the price growth.
