Solana has activated the Validator Admission Ticket feature gate, identified as SIMD-0357, on mainnet at epoch 1006. The change begins a validator-readiness phase for Alpenglow, requiring operators to prepare their vote accounts for the network’s future consensus architecture.
The activation does not yet switch Solana mainnet to the full Alpenglow protocol. It establishes the cryptographic and operational foundation needed for the later migration, including BLS public-key registration for validators that intend to remain eligible for consensus participation.
Important update for validator operators.
Solana mainnet validators can now register a BLS pubkey, a prerequisite for Alpenglow.
This week, a second feature gate, the Validator Admission Ticket (SIMD-0357), goes live. Once VAT activates, validators without a BLS pubkey stop… pic.twitter.com/nrutwxWQwt
— Solana Developers (@solana_devs) July 20, 2026
Validators Must Register BLS Keys
Validator operators are now subject to a protocol-level requirement rather than a federal or legal mandate. They must register a Boneh-Lynn-Shacham public key in their vote account before Alpenglow is enabled if they want to continue voting under the new consensus system.
BLS signatures are central to Alpenglow’s aggregated voting design. The scheme allows validator votes to be combined efficiently, supporting compact proofs that enough stake approved a particular state transition.
Operators need Agave and Solana command-line tooling compatible with the new vote-account structure to complete registration. Agave v4.1.0 was released as a stable build suitable for Mainnet Beta and includes support associated with BLS public-key setup.
Validators that do not complete the required configuration risk exclusion from the future Alpenglow voting set, which would prevent them from participating in consensus and earning corresponding rewards once the migration is fully enabled.
Validators! Make sure to set your BLS pubkey on chain asap. The VAT feature activation is sometime this week. Also for anyone wondering will the VAT feature activation also enable full alpenglow consensus, please read 👇 https://t.co/Gc5VU6cSpD
— Tim Garcia (@TimGarcia0) July 20, 2026
Admission Fees Will Change Validator Economics
The Validator Admission Ticket is ultimately designed to replace Solana’s existing on-chain voting costs. Under SIMD-0357, eligible voting validators will be charged 1.6 SOL per epoch instead of paying roughly 2 SOL per epoch through individual vote transactions.
The 1.6 SOL payment will be burned rather than redistributed to block producers, creating a different economic structure for validator participation. The fee is intended to preserve an admission cost after Alpenglow removes on-chain vote transactions from blocks.
That fee mechanism belongs to the broader Alpenglow rollout and should not be confused with the current feature-gate activation alone. Solana’s official upgrade roadmap describes VAT as part of the new consensus design, which aims to replace Proof of History-era voting mechanics with faster finality and aggregated signatures.
SIMD-0357 represents a mandatory preparation step for validator infrastructure. The next important indicators will be BLS-key registration coverage, operator readiness, admission-set stability and confirmation of when Solana activates the complete Alpenglow consensus transition.