BlockBeats report: On June 17, Helius researchers released a proposed proposal, SIMD-550, recommending an update to Solana’s inflation schedule by increasing the deflation rate from -15% to -30%, effectively doubling the speed at which inflation declines. This would reduce inflation to its long-term terminal rate of 1.5% within 2.8 years (early 2029), instead of 5.7 years (early 2032). According to their model, this proposal would reduce SOL issuance by 18.89 million over six years, equivalent to approximately $1.51 billion, while gradually lowering the nominal staking yield over the first three years from about 5.84% to approximately 4.34%, 3.00%, and 2.25%. The proposal is expected to have limited impact on the number of profitable validators, with 2 validators transitioning from profitable or break-even to unprofitable in the first year, 13 in the second year, and 30 in the third year.
SIMD-550 is an update to SIMD-411 (November 2025), which was paused as the ecosystem awaited new tools. SIMD-550 can be viewed as part of a broader effort to improve the SOL tokenomics, with other components including SIMD-553, which proposes adding burned resource fees, and Alpenglow’s Validator Admission Ticket (VAT).