Solana testnet has activated the first phase of proposal SIMD-0437, beginning tests for an account rent reduction mechanism, according to core development team Anza. The proposal includes five feature gates, and only the first has been enabled so far, meaning the full set of changes has not yet been completed or deployed to mainnet. Once all five phases are finished, Solana’s lamports_per_byte storage cost parameter is expected to fall from 6,960 to 696, a 90% reduction. For token accounts, the deposit required to maintain rent-exempt status is projected to drop from about $0.16 to $0.016, reducing account creation and application deployment costs.