The Solana Foundation launched a formal onchain governance framework on Thursday that allows validators to propose and vote on protocol-level decisions directly on the blockchain, with voting power determined by delegated SOL stake.
The system, called Solana Governance Proposals or SGPs, went live alongside a dedicated governance portal at governance.solana.com and a public GitHub repository for proposal documents. Any validator with at least 100,000 SOL delegated can open a new governance proposal. Voting is stake-weighted, verified by Merkle proof, and fully permissionless.
"Validators can now propose, support, and decide core protocol decisions via Solana Governance Proposals," the Solana Foundation said on X.
The launch was developed by Solana Turbine, which led development, and Exo, which handled the Node Consensus Network implementation.
How SGPs differ from the existing SIMD process
The governance framework introduces a distinction between two types of protocol decisions that previously operated under a single process. Solana Improvement Documents, or SIMDs, are technical specifications decided by core developers through a review process. SGPs are directional community signals that establish whether the validator set wants a given change pursued at all.
The GitHub documentation frames the difference around the question each document answers. An SGP answers whether the community should pursue a direction. A SIMD answers how to implement it. A "yes" on an SGP creates a mandate to proceed. The technical implementation that follows is then specified through one or more SIMDs.
The Solana Foundation cited Alpenglow, a proposed change to Solana's consensus protocol, as an example of where an SGP would have been the appropriate tool. Alpenglow was taken to a vote as a SIMD at a stage when it lacked sufficient technical detail to be approved as a specification. What core developers needed first was a directional signal from the community on whether to pursue the approach. An SGP could have provided that signal, with detailed SIMDs following once the design matured.
"SIMDs should focus on protocol changes, SGPs should be signals from the ecosystem," the Foundation wrote.
The voting rules and what a proposal must clear
A proposal must gather support from validators representing at least 15% of active stake before it qualifies for a formal vote. That threshold is designed to filter out proposals without genuine community interest and keep core developers focused on shipping rather than voting on low-priority questions.
Once a proposal clears the 15% support threshold, it follows a fixed timeline of 11 epochs. A Solana epoch is approximately two days. The process begins with a seven-epoch discussion period during which the proposal text is locked. One epoch follows for the Node Consensus Network to capture the stake state that determines voting weights. A three-epoch voting window then opens for the final stake-weighted vote.
Approval requires a supermajority: at least two-thirds of the combined For and Against stake, with Abstain votes excluded from the denominator. There is no minimum turnout requirement. A proposal that does not reach the two-thirds threshold within the three-epoch voting window is rejected.
To maintain vote integrity, proposals are pinned to a specific commit SHA on GitHub at the time they go onchain. A frozen proposal cannot be edited. Any correction requires a new SGP that supersedes the original.
Delegators can override their validator's vote
One feature of the SGP system separates it from many other stake-weighted governance models. Delegators who have assigned their stake to a validator but disagree with how that validator votes, or whose validator has not voted at all, can override the validator's position with their own vote. The override is weighted by the delegator's stake at governance.solana.com.
"Delegated your stake but disagree with how your validator voted? Or has your validator not voted at all? Delegators can now override the validator based on the delegator's stake weight," the Foundation said.
Solana's position as governance launches
Solana ranks as the second-largest blockchain network by total value locked at $4.92 billion, behind Ethereum's $37.3 billion, according to DefiLlama. The network generated over $587,000 in blockchain fees in the 24 hours preceding the governance announcement.
Other networks with stake-weighted governance mechanisms include Polkadot, Cosmos, Cardano, Tezos, and Avalanche. Solana's SGP framework adds a layer that was previously absent at the protocol level, where major directional decisions had relied on coordination outside a formal onchain structure.
In April, the Solana Foundation launched the Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises program, a structured security auditing and incident-response framework built in partnership with Web3 security firm Asymmetric Research. The SGP launch follows that infrastructure initiative as the second major governance-adjacent move from the Foundation in 2026.
Jordan V.
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