Solana activates Alpenglow upgrade, targeting 150-millisecond finality
Briefing by News4U · First published
Solana launched its first major consensus upgrade, Alpenglow, on mainnet Wednesday, replacing TowerBFT with a direct-voting system designed to cut finality from 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds.
The upgrade went live around 1:54 pm UTC on 21 October, with 446 of 654 validators certifying the switch. It introduces Votor, a certificate-based voting mechanism, and will later add Rotor for block distribution. [1] [2]
At activation, the network showed 6.6-second finality and 4,721 transactions per second. SOL rose nearly 3% in the preceding 24 hours. [1]
Users continue sending funds through existing wallets; fees and application behavior remain unchanged. Validator votes will no longer appear as on-chain transactions, so dashboards may show lower totals. [2]
Sources
- Solana’s Alpenglow launches on mainnet, targets 99% faster finality
Cointelegraph · · Full text
- Solana’s biggest network change since 2020 is live. Here’s how users benefit
CoinDesk · · Full text