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A long-awaited Solana update has gone live. All optional priority fees paid by users will be sent to the validators running the blockchain.
Solana’s median priority fee dropped 40% from the time period right before the new feature was activated, according to Solana Compass. However, it’s too early to tell whether that trend will hold. A more immediate consequence is that liquid staking tokens — which allow validators to pass along priority fee rewards, whereas regular Solana staking does not — just became the highest-yield show in town.
Solana users can pay a priority fee on top of the network’s base fee to increase a transaction’s chances of making it to the blockchain. Under Solana’s initial architecture, half of these priority fees went to the validators who run Solana’s software, and half were burned, or effectively…
