Solana Swaps SPL Token Program for Faster p-token at Epoch 971
On 13 May 2026, at the start of epoch 971, Solana activated SIMD-0266, silently replacing the bytecode of its classic SPL Token program with a new implementation called p-token while keeping the same program address and instruction set. The swap was carried out through a runtime feature gate that triggered once 95% of stake adopted it, copying a pre-deployed p-token binary into the existing program-data account. p-token is built on Pinocchio, a Solana development framework designed to eliminate allocator overhead and reduce compute-unit consumption per instruction. Because wallets, explorers, and decentralised exchanges interact with the same addresses, discriminators, and account layouts as before, no client-side code changes are required. The practical benefit is lower compute costs per token operation, which can improve transaction priority rankings and allow the per-account block compute budget to stretch further — though wallets with hard-coded compute limits will overpay until they re-simulate.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in