Solana has activated a major transaction-format upgrade, increasing the maximum transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. The 3.3-times increase went live on Mainnet on September 15 at epoch 1035. The change gives applications more room for complex instructions, cryptographic proofs and multisignature operations inside a single transaction.

Blockchain transactions contain more than token-transfer amounts. They can include signatures, account references, program instructions and other data required to execute an application.

Solana’s previous 1,232-byte ceiling forced developers to optimize around a relatively small transaction envelope. Some complicated workflows required multiple transactions, address lookup tables or bundles.

The new 4,096-byte limit is defined through SIMD-0296 and delivered using the v1 transaction format. Legacy and v0 transactions remain supported, so applications only need to adopt v1 when they require its additional capacity.

Solana says the larger envelope creates 3.3 times more space for workloads including zero-knowledge proofs, nested multisignatures, Winternitz one-time signatures and BLS signatures. Trading routers can also construct more complicated atomic routes without splitting operations across multiple transactions.

However, larger transactions do not remove every constraint. V1 transactions still have a 64-account-address limit and do not support address lookup tables. Solana research found that about 62% of observed v0 transactions referenced at least one lookup table, highlighting an important migration consideration.

A draft proposal, SIMD-0596, would increase the account limit to 96, but it is not part of the current 4,096-byte upgrade.

The transaction change follows another major capacity expansion. On July 29, Solana raised its maximum block compute limit from 60 million to 100 million compute units through SIMD-0286, a 66% increase.

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