Solana advances Alpenglow consensus upgrade

• Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade aims to reduce transaction finality times and improve network performance.
• The proposal introduces new consensus mechanisms designed to replace parts of Solana’s existing validator architecture.
• The upgrade targets faster transaction confirmation and improved reliability for applications running on Solana.

Solana (SOL) plans to activate Alpenglow on 21 October, targeting transaction finality of 150 milliseconds, down from 12.8 seconds.

The upgrade replaces TowerBFT, Solana’s current consensus protocol, with a system that finalises blocks after one or two voting rounds.

Alpenglow introduces Votor, which lets validators exchange votes directly and combine them into certificates instead of recording votes as transactions.

The upgrade targets roughly 99% faster finality, while Solana’s transaction execution, fees and account model remain unchanged.

A second component, Rotor, is planned to replace Solana’s Turbine data-distribution protocol, but its release date remains unscheduled.

Before activation, validators must run a supported Agave-based client and hold at least 0.8 SOL in their vote accounts.

The upgrade aims to make transactions settle almost immediately without requiring ordinary users to change how their wallets and applications work.

Following the update, SOL was trading down 3.9% at $103.01.