The Solana blockchain activated a new consensus protocol, Alpenglow, which reduces transaction finality time from about 12 seconds to 150 milliseconds. The upgrade is designed to accelerate settlements for payment services, cryptocurrency exchanges, and other financial applications operating within the Solana blockchain ecosystem.
Anza, one of Solana’s core development teams, announced the successful launch of Alpenglow, which replaced the TowerBFT consensus mechanism used since the network’s launch. The main change concerns finality, the point at which a transaction becomes irreversible. Previously, Solana provided preliminary transaction confirmation in fractions of a second, but reaching finality took about 12.8 seconds. Alpenglow reduces that time by roughly 85 times, or more than 98%.
According to Solana, the target finality time is around 150 ms, although actual performance depends on network latency and the distribution of validator stake. Alpenglow can also maintain consensus even when attackers control up to 20% of the stake and another 20% is inactive.
The improvement comes from a new voting mechanism called Votor, which allows validators to exchange messages directly instead of submitting votes as separate transactions. This enables blocks to reach finality in 1 or 2 voting rounds. Finalization in a single round requires support from at least 80% of the total validator stake. If that threshold isn’t reached, the protocol provides for an additional round with a 60% approval threshold.
Validator node operators must upgrade to compatible software and pay a Validator Admission Ticket (VAT) fee of 0.8 SOL per epoch to participate in transaction validation. Regular users, however, don’t need to take any additional action.
Before launch, Alpenglow underwent security audits, attack-resilience testing, and trials on Devnet and Testnet. The transition to the new consensus mechanism has already taken place on the live mainnet, with the transaction history preserved.
According to Solana’s official documentation, the Alpenglow upgrade also introduces several technical changes:
Validator votes are no longer included in blocks as separate transactions, changing how network transactions are counted;
The confirmed and finalized statuses now indicate the same level of transaction confirmation;
Multiple competing block versions can exist within a single slot, requiring changes to systems that process on-chain data;
Proof of History no longer determines the pace of block production. Timestamps are now assigned by block-producing validators and subsequently verified by other network participants.
Anza CEO Brennan Watt said the implementation of Alpenglow represents the largest and most ambitious blockchain upgrade since The Merge. The company moved from technical specifications to mainnet deployment in less than 18 months. According to Watt, the rapid transition was made possible through collaboration among developers, ecosystem participants, and validator node operators.
Developers expect faster finality to allow cryptocurrency exchanges to confirm deposits more quickly and payment services to receive nearly instant confirmation that transfers are irreversible. The mechanisms for executing smart contracts and calculating transaction fees remain unchanged.
The launch of Votor marked the first phase of Alpenglow’s implementation. Developers plan to activate Rotor next, replacing the existing Turbine block propagation system to further reduce network latency. No timeline has been announced for the next phase.
Solana Foundation is also actively involved in developing institutional financial solutions. In March 2026, it introduced a platform for launching corporate financial products, allowing companies to build blockchain-based financial services through a unified set of APIs. In July, SBI Holdings announced a strategic partnership with Solana Foundation to establish an on-chain financial market in Japan, supporting the full lifecycle of digital financial assets.
