Solana State Bloat Research Bounty: Proposing Enduring Solutions for Account Data Storage

Overview

Solana's account model requires all account data to be stored fully on-chain and replicated across all validators indefinitely. This leads to significant storage costs, blockchain state bloat, and high rent fees for maintaining accounts. As of mid-2025, the live state of all accounts on Solana is approximately 500 GB, with the full unpruned ledger exceeding 400 TB. Validators require high-end hardware, including at least 384 GB of RAM and enterprise-grade NVMe storage (often 2x 3.84 TB drives), contributing to operational costs that can range from $500–$1,000 per month per machine. Developers frequently complain about rent costs, which are proportional to data size (e.g., minimum balance exemptions require ~0.001–0.01 SOL for simple accounts), making it expensive to build and maintain applications. Without addressing state growth, rent cannot be safely lowered, and optimizations like in-memory state become infeasible long-term.

Anza is looking to solve this problem with SIMD-0341. However, the proposing solution is state compression which would harm data interoperability, break CPI call and UI. Pushing Solana away from it simplicity monolith design and closer the Ethereum’s L2 design. Users’ data in those compressed PDA now is either non-retrievable or you have to rely on a centralized party to keep it.

This bounty challenges the Superteam Vietnam community to deeply analyze this problem and propose innovative, enduring solutions that balance the needs of validators (reduced storage/hardware burdens), developers (data interoperability and simple querying), and users (no UI disruptions and minimal third-party data reliance).

Bounty Objectives

We seek high-quality research submissions that:

- Thoroughly examine the problem: Provide a detailed analysis of Solana's state bloat, backed by quantitative data. Include metrics such as current state size (~500 GB for accounts), growth rates (e.g., ledger expanding by several TB/month), validator storage requirements (e.g., 384+ GB RAM, multi-TB NVMe), rent cost impacts on devs (e.g., examples from real apps or complaints like those on Reddit/Solana Stack Exchange), and comparisons to other blockchains (e.g., Ethereum's 1–2 TB state issues).

- Propose at least one solution: Outline a comprehensive plan for an enduring fix, such as enhanced state compression, state archival mechanisms, verifiable off-chain storage with on-chain proofs, or state expiry protocols. The proposal must address:

- Feasibility: Technical implementation details, potential changes to the account model or consensus, and compatibility with existing Solana features (e.g., state compression already in use).

- Costs: Estimated development, deployment, and operational costs (e.g., hardware savings for validators, rent reductions for devs).

- Adoption: Migration strategy, backward compatibility, incentives for adoption, and potential risks (e.g., no breaking UI changes for users, preserving data interoperability).

- Benefits Breakdown:

- Validators: Reduced state replication, lower hardware needs, improved network decentralization.

- Developers: Simpler data management, lower rent, easy querying without third-party dependencies.

- Users: Seamless experience, no reliance on external storage providers, enhanced security/privacy.

- Multiple proposals encouraged: Submissions can include 1–3 solutions, with trade-offs compared (e.g., short-term vs. long-term impact).

Submissions should be well-researched, cited (e.g., Solana docs, GitHub proposals like SIMD for state management), and presented clearly (use tables for comparisons, diagrams for architectures).

Eligibility

- Exclusive to Vietnam.

- Submissions must be original and in English to better reach international audience.

Dealine and Prizes

Submission deadline is September 14th, 2025.
Prizes are $1000 - $800 - $700.

Why This Bounty?

This research will contribute to Solana's long-term scalability, drawing from ongoing discussions (e.g., state compression archival proposals). Top submissions may be shared with Solana Foundation for potential implementation.

Join the discussion on Superteam Vietnam X.
Let's build a leaner Solana!