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Solana switches to Alpenglow, targeting faster transaction settlement

Solana activated Alpenglow on October 21, replacing its voting system and targeting finality in about 150 milliseconds, while wallets and app use stay the same.

The Onchain Brief Editors2 min read
Solana switches to Alpenglow, targeting faster transaction settlement

Solana activated Alpenglow on its main network on October 21, replacing the voting system it has used since 2020 and targeting transaction finality in about 150 milliseconds. Finality is the point when a transaction can no longer be reversed. The Solana Foundation says users can keep using their existing wallets and apps.

The Foundation’s Alpenglow upgrade page says the change took effect at epoch 1064, at about 13:36 UTC. The network switched to the new system at slot 459,653,000, after a roughly 900-millisecond handoff.

How does Alpenglow change settlement?

Alpenglow changes how validators — the computers that check transactions and agree on the network’s records — vote on blocks. Under the old system, those votes were recorded as transactions on the blockchain. With Alpenglow, validators send votes directly to each other and combine them into certificates. That lets a block become final after one or two rounds of voting.

CoinDesk reported on the upgrade as a move from several seconds to a target of about 150 milliseconds under normal network conditions. The Foundation gives the old system’s finality time as about 12.8 seconds. The target is not a guarantee for every transaction: network conditions and the service handling a payment can affect when a user sees the result.

What could users notice?

Faster finality could help services act sooner after a payment. An exchange may be able to credit a deposit sooner, or a shop may get stronger confirmation that a stablecoin payment has settled. The benefit depends on each service using finality information promptly; a quicker network does not automatically make every app’s screen update at the same speed.

Users do not need to change how they send funds, and CoinDesk reported that wallets, fees and applications remain unchanged. The main change happens between validators, behind the apps people use.

Why might Solana transaction counts fall?

Some network dashboards may show lower transaction totals because validator votes no longer count as on-chain transactions. That drop would not, by itself, show that people are making fewer payments or trades. Comparing activity before and after the switch requires separating user transactions from the votes that used to be recorded in blocks.

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