Gabe Rodriguez, a core developer at Anza, has submitted a formal proposal to retire durable nonces from Solana’s network. The change is detailed within Solana Improvement Document SIMD-0723, which was filed on November 5. Durable nonce accounts, designed to allow transactions signed in advance to be submitted at a later time, are set for deprecation under this plan. Solana is a leading layer-1 blockchain platform known for its high throughput and low fees, emphasizing speed and scalability for decentralized applications.
Background on durable nonces and proposed changes
Durable nonces are stored values in special Solana accounts that replace the need for a recent blockhash, a normally short-lived piece of data attached to every transaction. This tool enables use cases where a transaction must be signed in advance or within an offline environment and submitted later. However, Rodriguez’s proposal mandates that “every transaction needs a recent blockhash” once the update goes live, effectively discontinuing support for durable nonces.
Following the change, the system program instructions used to manage nonce accounts—such as initialize, advance, and upgrade—would be disabled. Instructions that allow users to withdraw funds or reassign account control would remain functional. Any existing nonce accounts are set to remain untouched by this proposal.
Mini dictionary: Anza is a core development group dedicated to advancing Solana’s validator infrastructure, including protocol improvements and validator software.
Implementation timeline and migration impact
A repository commit on November 6 set the migration period at a minimum of six months from the proposal date, with the new regime not activating on Solana’s mainnet-beta before May 5, 2027. At present, the proposal’s status remains as Draft and has not yet received approvals from required stakeholders. To be merged, reviews are needed from both an Anza team member and a representative from Jump Crypto’s Firedancer team, which develops an alternate Solana validator client.
Under the new system, any party who signs a transaction now would need to ensure it is broadcast within 150 blocks, as transactions referencing older blockhashes become invalid past that threshold. The proposal specifically highlights the challenge for exchanges and custodians operating with air-gapped, or offline, machines whose approval cycles can outlast the 150-block window. In an earlier discussion, keys responsible for minting USDC and USDT, two major stablecoins, were referenced as notable users of the durable nonce feature.
Michael Gutkin of Fireblocks, a major digital asset custodian, described the planned retiring of durable nonces as the right direction, but cautioned that institutional migrations without a compatibility bridge would require at least 12 months.
SIMD-0723 does not offer a compatibility bridge and assigns a minimum six-month migration window instead.
Proposed alternatives and network security
The proposal suggests two alternatives: Anza’s Programmatic Signer and Blueshift’s Vector. Both tools enable transaction signing offline, but replace the nonce mechanism with program-derived addresses (PDAs), where authority is delegated to an account controlled by a smart contract. The relayer submits the approved signatures and the program checks them onchain. Rodriguez, as the draft’s main author, has made significant contributions to the Programmatic Signer project, although the repository was still labeled “under construction” as of November 9.
Mini dictionary: A program-derived address (PDA) is a type of Solana account that is generated and managed by a smart contract (program), rather than by an individual using a private key. PDAs provide flexible access control and are vital in building composable decentralized applications.
The proposal notes that a failed submission in this context does not serve as a revocation, underscoring that special care will be needed when handling offline approvals.
Usage data and notable incidents
Past incidents have influenced Solana’s consideration of durable nonces. In 2022, a bug caused mainnet downtime for approximately 4.5 hours when validators processed a failed transaction through both blockhash and nonce routes. Data presented by Max Resnick in June highlighted that, although nonce transactions made up about 3.1% of activity during one epoch, they were responsible for roughly 30% of priority fees paid. Of those fees, the vast majority were attributed to just 555 accounts.
| Epoch Transaction Type | Proportion of All Transactions | Share of Priority Fees | Accounts Paying Most Fees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nonce transactions | 3.1% | 30% | 555 of 103,672 |
The exchange Drift was not mentioned in the SIMD, though in April Drift claimed to have lost $295.7 million in an exploit tied to the durable nonce feature. The platform called the nonce attack surface “central” to the incident in its subsequent recovery plan.
The six-month migration period begins with the proposal’s publication date, regardless of when replacement solutions are fully prepared. Major custodians are expected to plan their adoption alongside other recent upgrades to Solana, such as the Alpenglow consensus shift and a larger 4,096-byte transaction size limit.
