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Solana activates Alpenglow, targeting 150ms transaction finality

Solana activated Alpenglow, replacing its 2020-era consensus system and targeting faster settlement; wallets and fees stay the same, while actual timing may vary.

BitCurrent Newsroom2 min read

Solana activates Alpenglow, targeting 150ms transaction finality

Solana has relied on the same consensus system since its 2020 launch; on Oct. 21, it activated Alpenglow, a major upgrade targeting faster transaction finality. Finality is the point when a transaction can no longer be reversed.

  • Target finality: about 150 milliseconds, down from 12.8 seconds.
  • Activation: epoch 1064, beginning around 13:36 UTC.
  • Validator votes move off-chain and are bundled into certificates.

The Solana Foundation’s Alpenglow upgrade page confirms the protocol is live on mainnet. The Block reported that the change retires TowerBFT, the consensus protocol Solana had used since March 2020.

How does Alpenglow change transaction settlement?

Under TowerBFT, validators recorded votes as on-chain transactions, and finality took about 12.8 seconds. With Alpenglow, validators send votes directly to one another and combine them into certificates, allowing a block to become final after one or two voting rounds.

The target is roughly 150 milliseconds. That could let exchanges credit deposits and merchants treat payments as settled sooner, though the target is not a guaranteed time for every transaction.

Solana’s announcement says the upgrade changes consensus, not transaction execution. Users can keep their existing wallets and apps, and transaction formats and fees stay the same.

What will users notice, and what remains open?

For typical users, no action is needed. Faster finality could shorten the wait for a payment or deposit to be treated as settled, while the interface and steps for sending a transaction remain unchanged.

The network’s headline transaction totals may fall because validator votes no longer appear in blocks. That change in counting does not by itself show that user activity has dropped.

The Block’s report on the mainnet activation said Anza put finality at about 150 milliseconds. How consistently that target holds under live network conditions, and how quickly individual services reflect the faster settlement, remain open.

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