Hardware Ready Ready to Bench?
On November 5, the draft of SIMD-0723 was presented on the Solana network. The proposal, advanced by Anza core developer Gabe Rodriguez, provides for the elimination of the ‘durable nonces’ functionality. The objective is to force custodians and exchanges to use a recent blockhash, valid for 150 blocks, for every transaction. On November 6, a timeline was added setting the deadline for activation on mainnet-beta at May 5, 2027.
Why it matters
The modification responds to a security risk that emerged after the hack suffered by Drift on April 1. According to data reported by sources, the value of the attack is indicated as $270 million by CoinDesk and as losses of $295.7 million by Unchained. Drift defined the attack surface linked to durable nonces as central to the execution of the exploit in its recovery plan. Eliminating this functionality reduces the risk that previously signed transactions are reused unexpectedly, a critical problem for institutional custodians like Fireblocks and Blueshift.
The numbers
The proposal provides for a minimum migration window of six months. However, Michael Gutkin, representative of Fireblocks, estimated that 12 months is the feasible minimum for an institutional-scale migration without a compatibility bridge. Technical data indicate that nonces represent only 3.1% of transactions in an epoch (June data), but generate 30% of priority fees. These fees are concentrated in 555 accounts, which correspond to 97.5% of the total payments for nonces on a universe of 103,672 active accounts.
What remains to be understood
SIMD-0723 is currently in ‘Draft’ status and requires approval from Anza and Jump Crypto (Firedancer). The proposal does not explicitly mention Drift, although the exchange linked nonces to its incident. Alternatives to replace durable nonces include Anza’s Programmatic Signer and Blueshift’s Vector. As of November 9, the Programmatic Signer repository was still labeled ‘under construction’, with 136 commits by Rodriguez, so its operational readiness is not confirmed. Custodians will need to plan this migration along with other recent changes, such as the switch to Alpenglow consensus and the increase of the transaction limit to 4,096 bytes.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or an investment recommendation.
* Content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems.