Following Solana inflation reduction defeat, could ‘left curve 228’ be next?
Solana Foundation’s former head of strategy proposes increasing the disinflation rate
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It’s been three weeks since Solana’s validators failed to pass SIMD-0228, a governance proposal that aimed to shift Solana’s issuance to a market-based mechanism and reduce inflation in the process. But while validators — who earn their keep partly from Solana inflation — voted the measure down, issuance still doesn’t feel like a settled question.
With the implementation of SIMD-0096, which got rid of Solana’s priority fee “burn,” the network also lost a disinflationary mechanism, and many ecosystem participants feel that the network is “overpaying” for economic security by way of inflation. While there’s no looming fix for this in the short term, the Solana Foundation’s former head of strategy has made a counterproposal.
Austin Federa’s “left curve 228” pitch says Solana should accelerate the network’s disinflation curve and “see if anything breaks.”
Solana’s inflation curve sets a current issuance rate of around 4.6%, which will shrink to 1.5% in 15% increments every 180 epochs, or roughly one year. Federa, who is now co-founder of the buzzy internet infrastructure for crypto startup DoubleZero, would increase the disinflation rate to 30% every 180 epochs.
Rounding 180 epochs to a year, Federa’s proposal would drop Solana’s inflation rate to around 1.5% in roughly three years. The benefit of such a scheme, Federa points out, is that it would keep Solana from overpaying for security without creating uncertainty on inflation rates — which some in Solana criticized SIMD-0228 for doing.
The proposal has taken some heat, most notably from Kevin Ricoy, founder of crypto media startup Allmight. Ricoy chafed against “well-meaning autists playing central banker [and] constantly fiddling with the monetary policy” while arguing that bitcoin’s value comes from its changeless inflation mechanics. He followed up with a more measured rebuttal later on.
When I DMed Federa to ask whether he had any comment to add on “left curve 228,” he said: “Heh. Not really,” before writing: “I think at its core, 228 felt complicated at a time when people crave simplicity. As people feel the change from AI, from a change in government in many countries around the world, it just seemed messy.
“Left curve 228 was an attempt to not let the great be the enemy of the good, and to move Solana in the right general direction. Left curve 228 is objectively wrong — but I do think it is less wrong…And less wrong is great. Solana burns 50% of base fees, which is not optimal — but it’s pretty close to optimal, and it’s very easy to understand.”
He then added, “[Oh] no, did I just do a Cobie?”
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