Solana protocol specification plan targets 4 gaps

Solana protocol specification plan targets 4 gaps in upgrade rules

A Solana proposal posted Oct. 30 would gather every network rule into one shared specification, citing 4 gaps; as of 6:40 p.m. ET Thursday it is still under discussion.

The quick take

Price: $SOL $89.08, -6.9% in 24 hours (CoinGecko, as of 6:40 p.m. ET, Nov. 5)
Trigger: Discussion 716, “Move to Protocol Spec,” opened Oct. 30 in Solana’s proposal repository.
Watch: Whether maintainers update SIMD-0001, the document that sets the proposal process, to adopt the change.

What happened

Developers of Solana ($SOL) are weighing a Solana protocol specification: one document that would hold every rule of the network. The plan sits in the Solana Improvement Documents (SIMD) repository on GitHub.

The GitHub user bw-solana, a maintainer of the repository, opened the discussion on Oct. 30. CryptoSlate identifies the author as Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza, the team behind the Agave validator client.

Today each upgrade gets its own SIMD. Under the plan, ideas would still start as SIMD discussions. A finished change would then become an edit to the full specification, and it would only merge once live: “A normative protocol change merges when that change becomes active on Mainnet,” the post says.

The post lists 4 problems. Much existing behavior is written down only in client code, so it gets redefined in different ways. Reviewers cannot easily see if a proposal reaches every part of the protocol it touches.

Standalone SIMDs also lack a shared structure, and newcomers must work out behavior from client software. CryptoSlate adds that clients reading the rules differently could handle the same transaction in different ways.

CryptoSlate reports that the draft specification covers 18 areas, including transactions, consensus, fees and validator rewards. It is not an adopted protocol change.

What to watch next

Jacob Creech, a Solana Foundation co-author of SIMD-0001, replied that a proposal should get its number only at pull-request review. He also said the specification should live in the same repository, and the author agreed on both points.

The post proposes updating SIMD-0001 and agreeing on a baseline specification next. No vote or date has been set.

Bottom line: Solana developers are debating whether one shared rulebook should replace standalone upgrade documents, with no decision yet.

Price data: CoinGecko (cross-checked with Jupiter).