Solana’s First Network-Wide Vote Passes by a Hair as Kraken and Galaxy Flip Late on SOL Disinflation

Solana just ran its first-ever network-wide governance vote, and the headline proposal passed by the thinnest possible margin — exactly at the two-thirds supermajority threshold required, after two of the network’s most influential institutional validators switched sides in the closing minutes. Here’s the vote by the numbers.

• 67.00% — final support for SGP-0002, the proposal to double Solana’s disinflation rate, landing exactly on the 66.67% supermajority line required to pass.
• 176.29 million SOL voted in favor, versus 66.19 million opposed and 20.63 million abstaining.
• 60.7% of eligible staked SOL turned out to vote — a strong showing for a network’s debut governance process.
• 15% to 30% — the proposal doubles Solana’s annual disinflation rate, shortening the runway to the network’s 1.5% terminal inflation floor from roughly 2032 to around 2029.
• 18.9 million SOL — the estimated reduction in future issuance over the next six years, equal to about 2.6% of supply under the old schedule.
• 8.92 million SOL — the voting power behind Kraken’s largest validator, which flipped from 100% opposed to roughly 90% in favor with under an hour left on the clock.
• 92% to 58% — Galaxy Digital’s validator swung from overwhelmingly abstaining to majority support in the same final stretch, alongside a similar late move from Drift Protocol’s validator.
• ~500 — the number of calls Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz says he personally made in the final hours to lock down enough votes to get the proposal across the line.
• 63.9% — where the vote would have finished, short of passing, had Kraken not reversed its position.

The drama wasn’t confined to SGP-0002. Solana’s ballot actually carried three separate proposals. SGP-0001, a constitution-style framework governing how future network decisions get proposed and voted on, passed comfortably with 95.35% support. SGP-0003, which would have redirected more transaction fees toward being burned, fell short at around 54% — well below the threshold needed. Only the disinflation measure came down to the wire, largely because it directly affects staking economics: validators and custodians earning yield from new SOL issuance had a financial incentive to vote against cutting that issuance, which is exactly why Kraken’s late reversal drew sharp criticism.

Kraken co-chief Arjun Sethi pushed back on the idea that the exchange’s validator should have voted its own book, arguing that “custodians should be conduits, not voices” — a pointed response to criticism that Kraken effectively decided the outcome for stakers who never explicitly weighed in. The passage of SGP-0002 doesn’t take effect overnight: implementation requires re-anchoring Solana’s supply curve through a feature gate known as SIMD-0550, along with testing and validator coordination that developers estimate will take at least four and a half months before the new, faster disinflation schedule actually kicks in. Once it does, projected nominal staking yields are expected to compress from around 5.25% today toward roughly 4.34% in year one and further down to about 2.25% by year three.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Staking yields and token supply schedules can change based on network governance outcomes; always verify current parameters before making decisions.

Want a primer on how blockchain issuance and staking yields actually work? Visit Coin680’s Bitcoin Academy for more explainers.