- Solana developers want to retire a risky feature. Proposal SIMD-0723, filed Nov. 5 by Anza’s Gabe Rodriguez, would end durable nonces, which keep a signed transaction valid indefinitely, CoinDesk reported.
- The feature was central to a major exploit. Attackers got approvals signed in advance and let them sit for more than a week before using them to drain at least $270 million from trading protocol Drift on April 1; Drift later blamed a North Korean state-affiliated group.
- A small group would feel most of the change. Durable nonce transactions made up about 3% of Solana traffic in one June period but paid 30% of all priority fees, and just 555 accounts sent 97.5% of them, according to researcher Max Resnick.
- The timeline is not before May 5, 2027. The draft gives users at least six months to migrate, but the Solana Foundation’s own deprecation page still says “No date set,” which could push the cutoff later. The proposal still needs sign-off from Anza and Firedancer engineers.
What Happened?
Solana’s developers have proposed retiring durable nonces, a mechanism that lets a transaction signed today still execute weeks later, CoinDesk reported. Normal Solana transactions carry a recent blockhash and expire after about 30 seconds now that the network runs 200-millisecond blocks. Custodians and exchanges rely on durable nonces because their approvals happen on air-gapped machines where submitting a signature can take longer. The proposal, SIMD-0723, was filed Nov. 5 by Gabe Rodriguez of Anza, which builds Solana’s main validator software, and states that “after activation, every transaction needs a recent blockhash.” It cites years of bugs, including a 2022 incident that halted mainnet for about 4.5 hours, and says the feature will not be activated on mainnet-beta before May 5, 2027.
Why It Matters?
Removing the feature closes off an attack path that helped drain at least $270 million from Drift, one of the largest exploits on the network, but it shifts the operational burden to institutional custodians that sign offline. Their replacement would be an onchain program that checks an offline signature, with Anza’s Programmatic Signer and Blueshift’s Vector named as options. The draft warns that “a failed execution can leave an authorization usable,” meaning a custody desk that sees a failed transfer cannot assume the approval behind it has expired. For SOL holders, the change targets a narrow but fee-rich slice of activity: about 3% of traffic paying 30% of priority fees in Resnick’s June sample.
What’s Next?
The proposal must be approved by at least one engineer at Anza and one at Firedancer, the rival validator client built by Jump, before it can be merged. Watch whether the Solana Foundation sets a firm date, since its page still starts the six-month clock only once a replacement is ready. Custodians and exchanges will need to test the replacement signing programs well before any 2027 cutoff.
Affected Tickers and Coins: SOL
Source: CoinDesk
