Overview
- Solana’s P‑Token upgrade, also called the Optimized Token Program (SIMD‑0266), is live on mainnet and cuts compute use for common token actions by roughly 95% to 98%.
- A standard token transfer fell from about 4,645 compute units, the network’s measure of processing work, to about 76, and TransferChecked dropped from roughly 6,200 to about 105.
- Solana says the change frees about 10% to 13% of each block’s capacity without raising block limits or requiring validator hardware changes.
- The rollout keeps existing SPL token wallets, apps, and exchanges working without code changes through full backward compatibility.
- The program adds a batch instruction and a zero‑copy design that removes needless data copying, which should lower user costs and boost throughput for payments, DeFi, and other high‑frequency activity.