SIMD (Solana Improvement Document)

Solana's formal proposal process for protocol changes. Analogous to Ethereum's EIPs. Examples: SIMD-0266 P-Token, SIMD-228 inflation, SIMD-0096 stake mechanics.

SIMD — Solana Improvement Document

SIMDs are formal proposal documents for changes to the Solana protocol. They are Solana’s counterpart to Ethereum’s EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals). Each SIMD passes through discussion, review, validator approval, and finally mainnet activation via a feature gate.

Who can submit a SIMD

Any person or team. In practice, most SIMDs come from Anza, the Firedancer team, Helius, or other core devs. Submission is via pull request against the Solana Improvement Documents repository.

Examples of active SIMDs

SIMD-0266 — Efficient Token Program (P-Token activation, May 2026)
SIMD-228 — Market-Based Emission Mechanism (discussed inflation change)
SIMD-0096 — Validator Stake Distribution Tweaks
Alpenglow Whitepaper — Consensus mechanism change (not a SIMD directly, but related)

Lifecycle

Draft as a PR
Community discussion in the PR thread
Review by core maintainers (Anza, Firedancer team)
Approval via GitHub reactions plus implementation
Feature-gate deployment on devnet / testnet
Mainnet activation in a specific epoch via validator vote

Deep dive

Pillars P-Token explained, SIMD-228 inflation, and Alpenglow explained.

SIMD (Solana Improvement Document)