Anza, the developer of the Agave validator client, told Solana mainnet operators on 5 November 2026 to upgrade to Agave 4.4.1 before epoch 1079, according to reports by Crypto Briefing, The Defiant and TokenPost. Nodes still on older versions when the epoch began were to be forked off the network, which would leave them out of consensus and out of voting rewards. Operators running Firedancer instead of Agave were pointed to Firedancer v26.10.6, which supports the same change.
What changed
Agave 4.4.1 carries a patch that sets a minimum loaded-data size for loader-v3 ProgramData accounts, the accounts that hold deployed program code. The reports describe it as a critical fix needed for compatibility with an upcoming feature-gate activation. Once that feature is active, it changes which transactions fail on Solana's loaded-account-data size limit. According to the reports, the requirement covered unstaked nodes such as RPC servers as well as voting validators.
The patch follows Agave 4.4.0, which Anza marked stable and recommended for mainnet on 30 October 2026, after a phased rollout.
How the network handled it
BitBasic's Solana data shows no visible disruption at the deadline. Epoch 1079 began at 13:34 UTC on 6 November 2026 and ended with 431,120 of 432,000 slots producing a block, a fill rate of 99.8% (880 slots skipped). Epoch 1080, which began at 15:18 UTC on 7 November, was at 99.91% after about 328,000 slots on the morning of 8 November. At that time, 35 validators holding 0.16% of the stake were delinquent (not voting).
What it means
- Validators and RPC operators: any node not yet on Agave 4.4.1 or Firedancer v26.10.6 should upgrade now. A node on an older version can drop off the network.
- Delegators: a validator that missed the upgrade stops voting and earns no rewards until it catches up. Check that your validator is voting on its BitBasic page or in the validator list.
BitBasic could not reach Anza's own advisory during this run, so the details above are as reported by the outlets listed below.
