Solana tightens validator funding rules, with a participation period limited to 12 months

The Vice President of Technology at the Solana Foundation, Jacob Creech, responded to the controversy arising from the recent adjustments to the Solana Foundation Delegated Program (SFDP). The adjustments include: setting the participation period for validators in the SFDP to 12 months, automatic graduation after staking 300,000 SOL, capping the number of validators at 100, and requiring participants to run their own validator nodes.

Jacob Creech stated that the SFDP originally had three main tasks: to help new validators get started, to establish a healthy testnet, and to allow some validators to test network updates early. As the Solana ecosystem expands and the validator community matures, the original mechanisms have struggled to adequately meet the ever-changing demands of the network. The foundation hopes to shift towards a more proactive and flexible delegation mechanism, focusing on supporting network health and ecosystem contributors. The SFDP will continue to support new validators, and the foundation will also reward validators who make significant contributions to network health through delegation outside of the program. Previously, the foundation had delegated staking to ecosystem contributors like Blueshift and supported validators who were the first to test Frankendancer.

In response to community concerns that the adjustments might lead to a decrease in the number of validators, Jacob Creech stated that reducing the number of validators is not the goal of this adjustment. However, if enough high-quality contributors cannot be found, a decline in the number of validators may become a side effect. He also revealed that over 100 validators have submitted materials to apply for continued support.