Over 77% of Solana governance participants voted in favor of giving validators the full priority fee amount per transaction.

Solana validators will now receive 100% of priority fees from transactions, following a governance vote that passed with 77% approval. This change, part of Solana Improvement Document number 96 (SIMD-0096), aims to enhance network security and efficiency by fully incentivizing validators. Previously, priority fees were split between burning and rewarding validators, which led to validators making side deals with transaction submitters for more SOL tokens. By directing all priority fees to validators, the new model seeks to eliminate these side deals and ensure validators focus on maintaining network integrity. Following the vote, SOL saw a 1.6% increase, trading at $166.