Solana’s Future Inflation Rates May Be Decided by Galaxy’s MESA Model

Last Updated on April 18, 2025

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Smartphone with Solana logo held in front of a screen that displays charts, bitcoin. Source: keBu.Medien - stock.adobe.com

Key Takeaways:

  • Galaxy Research proposed a weighted voting model (MESA) allowing validators to vote on a range of deflation rates, instead of binary choices, to guide Solana’s inflation policy.
  • The model aims to reflect the average preference across validators and produce a market-responsive emission curve, maintaining the long-term inflation target of 1.5%.
  • This approach addresses challenges from previous proposals like SIMD-228, enabling a more nuanced community consensus.

Galaxy Research has proposed a new voting system, called Multiple Election Stake-Weight Aggregation (MESA), to help the Solana community reach consensus on inflation rate changes more effectively. 

The model moves away from binary yes/no votes, allowing validators to vote across a range of deflation rates

The final rate is then determined by the weighted average of all votes, reflecting a more market-responsive outcome.

This proposal follows the failure of an earlier initiative, SIMD-228, which showed broad agreement on reducing inflation but couldn’t settle on specific parameters due to the limitations of binary voting. 

MESA aims to offer a flexible and inclusive approach without altering Solana’s fixed terminal inflation target of 1.5%.

For example, if different vote percentages support varying rates, MESA would calculate an average outcome—like 30.6% if the votes were split among 0%, 30%, and 33% reductions. 

This method allows a smoother path toward the 1.5% terminal rate while capturing a broader range of validator preferences.

Currently, Solana’s inflation is at 4.6%, down from an initial 8%, and continues to decline annually. 

Galaxy Strategic Opportunities, an affiliate of Galaxy Research, also operates within the Solana ecosystem as a staking and validation provider.

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