Solana's first binding on-chain governance vote passed only because JitoSOL holders could vote independently of validators, according to Jito Foundation head of governance Nick Almond. The network's disinflation proposal cleared its threshold by a fraction of a percentage point as validators face an 87% revenue decline and a new rival in Robinhood Chain.
Solana's proposal to double its disinflation rate, known as SGP-0002, passed with 67.001% of votes cast in favor, against a required 66.667% supermajority. Almond said the vote would have failed without a mechanism that let holders of Jito's liquid staking token, JitoSOL, cast their votes separately from the roughly 350 validators the pool delegates to.
How JitoSOL swung the vote
Jito directed roughly 10 million SOL, then worth close to $1 billion, toward the proposal, representing 13% of the token's total value locked. On-chain tallies show the yes side was still about 58 million SOL short of the threshold with roughly 70 minutes left before a reversal by Kraken's validator, which flipped roughly 8.1 million SOL, combined with JitoSOL's bloc vote to push it over the line.
The proposal doubles the pace at which Solana's annual issuance shrinks, moving the network's terminal inflation rate of 1.5% up by roughly three years, to early 2029, lifting the inflation schedule ahead of prior projections. According to Almond: "For me, that really decentralizes the network out to almost the individual level." A separate proposal to split the network's flat transaction fee failed to clear the same threshold and has returned to the proposal stage.
Fewer validators, new competition
Solana's validator count has fallen to around 700 from roughly 1,000, a trend Almond tied to rising hardware requirements as the network pushes for bigger blocks and shorter block times. Solana's network revenue fell 87% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, to $141 million from $1.09 billion, as memecoin trading's share of spot volume dropped to 16% from 40% over the same period, per a report from 21Shares.
The network also faces a new competitor in Robinhood Chain, the Arbitrum-based layer 2 that Robinhood Markets launched this year: its gas fees rose 82-fold over 11 days in early September, briefly exceeding those of Ethereum, Solana and Tron combined on a single day. SOL traded at $99.48 on Thursday, up 2.4% over 24 hours and down 1.7% over the past week, according to CoinGecko.
Source: The Defiant
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