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Solana activates Alpenglow, targeting 150ms finality

Solana activated Alpenglow on Oct. 21, replacing TowerBFT with a voting system that targets 150-millisecond finality while leaving wallets and fees unchanged.

The Onchain Brief Editors2 min read
Solana activates Alpenglow, targeting 150ms finality

Solana activated Alpenglow on its main network on Oct. 21, replacing its old system for agreeing on transactions and aiming to make them final in about 150 milliseconds. Finality is the point when a transaction is treated as settled and no longer reversible.

The Solana Foundation’s Alpenglow update says the upgrade went live at the start of epoch 1064, at about 13:36 UTC. It replaces TowerBFT, which took about 12.8 seconds to finalize a transaction, with a system called Votor.

How does Alpenglow change transaction settlement?

Alpenglow lets validators, the computers that agree on Solana’s transaction record, send votes directly to one another. They combine those votes into certificates that show a block has enough support. Under the old system, votes were recorded as transactions and approvals built up over successive blocks. Votor can finalize a block after one or two rounds of voting.

The new system targets roughly 150 milliseconds for finality. That is a target, not a guaranteed wait for every transaction. The CoinDesk report on the activation notes that services may receive finality information later than validators do.

What will Solana users notice?

People can keep using their existing wallets, and transaction fees and app operations stay the same, according to the Foundation. Apps and services could act on settled payments sooner. For example, an exchange could credit a deposit or a shop could release goods once it has stronger assurance that a payment is final. How quickly that appears to a customer still depends on the service they use.

One visible change may be in network statistics. Validator votes no longer appear as transactions in blocks, so dashboards that counted those votes may show lower transaction totals after the switch. That drop would not, by itself, show that people are making fewer payments or trades.

Is the whole Alpenglow rollout finished?

The voting change, Votor, is live; a second phase called Rotor is still planned. It is intended to change how block data spreads across the network, but Solana’s upgrade page says it is not yet scheduled. The Oct. 21 activation therefore brings the new voting system to mainnet, while Rotor remains future work.

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