Helius Researcher Proposes Initiative to Accelerate SOL Inflation Reduction

On June 17, Helius researchers released the proposed SIMD-550, an update to Solana’s inflation plan that would double the protocol’s deflation rate—boosting it from -15% to -30%—and cut the speed of inflation decline in half. This would bring Solana’s inflation down to its long-term steady-state rate of 1.5% within 2.8 years (first half of 2029), a shift from the original timeline of 5.7 years (first half of 2032). According to their model, the proposal would reduce SOL issuance by 18.89 million tokens over six years, valued at roughly $15.1 billion, while gradually lowering nominal staking yields in the first three years: from around 5.84% to approximately 4.34%, 3.00%, and 2.25% respectively. The team expects the impact on profitable validators to be limited—only 2 validators would move from profitable or break-even to unprofitable in Year 1, followed by 13 in Year 2 and 30 in Year 3. SIMD-550 is a revised version of SIMD-411 (from November 2025), which was halted because the ecosystem was awaiting new supporting tools. The proposal is part of a broader effort to refine SOL’s tokenomics, alongside other initiatives: SIMD-553, which would add additional transaction fee burns, and Alpenglow’s Validator Admission Tickets (VAT).